Sebastien Bourdais will join the factory Cadillac team for the final round of the 2024 World Endurance Championship in Bahrain early next month.
Bourdais, the outright 2014 Daytona 24 Hours winner, will join Alex Lynn and Earl Bamber in the #2 Chip Ganassi-entered Cadillac V-Series.R for what would be his third appearance in WEC this year.
The Frenchman started the season with the American outfit in the new Qatar 1812km round before returning at the Le Mans 24 Hours in Ganassi’s second entry, teaming up with IndyCar star Scott Dixon and sportscar ace Renger van der Zande in the #3 Caddy.
“It’s good to get back in the car with Alex and Earl,” said Bourdais, who finished third in the recently concluded IMSA SportsCar Championship with the US arm of the Ganassi Cadillac squad.
“Performance-wise, it seems like the car is in a really good window. It’s pretty light, good on power and competitive, so there is definitely something to play for. Bahrain is a really big challenge. It’s an extremely abrasive racetrack.
“Tyre deg is very high and using the tyre the right way and not hurting it but making it function without making it slide is a critical thing to do. You have to do it with setup, dampers, traction control and you name it. We’ll try to find some recipes that work and hopefully, we’ll wind up in a good spot.”
Ganassi/Cadillac Racing has been one of the few teams to take advantage of the regulations to run a two-driver line-up for six-hour races this year.
This meant that Lynn and Bamber raced as a duo in five of the eight rounds this year, with Bourdais partnering them for the pair of rounds in the Middle East at either end of the campaign and IndyCar champion Alex Palou serving as the third driver in the Le Mans centrepiece event.
It marked a shift in the marque’s approach from 2023, when the now-retired Richard Westbrook took part in every round along with Lynn and Bamber.
The WEC was planning to mandate three drivers in each Hypercar entry from 2025, but appears to have gone back on that idea after pushback from teams.
Cadillac’s best result of the season so far is a fourth-place finish achieved at the returning Austin event in September.
The General Motors brand will end its partnership with Ganassi following the Bahrain event to begin a new chapter with Jota, which will be running a pair of V-Series.Rs in Hypercar next year after competing in 2023-24 with customer Porsche machinery.
“We started off the season really well. Eventually [we] didn’t get the result because of the circumstances, but we certainly deserved a good finish,” said Bourdais.
“The car was very competitive in the race and we played the short game really well. Unfortunately, it’s been a bit of a tough season results-wise. There was always something coming in the way of a good result. If we could send it off on a high that would be pretty cool.
Other changes
Elsewhere, Alpine has shuffled its driver line-up following Nicolas Lapierre's decision to retire from racing. While Jules Gounon will join the team as expected, he has been drafted in the #35 Alpine A424 alongside Ferdinand Habsburg and Paul-Loup Chatin.
Charles Milesi moves from the #35 car to team up with Mick Schumacher and Matthieu Vaxiviere in the #36 car, taking the spot previously occupied by Lapierre.
In LMGT3, Conrad Laursen will replace Clemens Schmid in the #78 ASP Lexus RC F GT3, while Giorgio Roda and Giammarco Levorato will race the #88 Proton Ford Mustang GT3, with both Mikkel Pedersen and team owner Christian Ried stepping away from the cockpit for the bonus points finale.
