AllRacing

Wayne Taylor Racing ready for its big moment at Le Mans

Even after the blue No. 101 Cadillac V-Series.R was pushed through public scrutineering in the city centre of Le Mans over the weekend, the magnitude of the occasion hadn’t quite sunk in for the Wayne Taylor Racing crew.

“I mean, there’s really no words to describe this,” Wayne Taylor told RACER on Friday during scrutineering. But the often quotable, sometimes blunt team owner, who won his class at Le Mans as a driver in 1998, will surely find the words in time. He always does.

The confirmation of Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing’s Le Mans debut came in March and had been years in the making. Taylor himself hadn’t been exactly elusive about his desire to take his team to the race from the first year of the LMDh platform.

But it became clear that WTR’s previous partners at Acura/Honda Racing Corporation didn’t have the FIA World Endurance Championship or Le Mans in their short-term plans. That facilitated WTR’s return to Cadillac and General Motors after a brief period apart.

And of all the accolades that Taylor’s team has accomplished since its inception in 2004 – five overall wins in the Rolex 24 At Daytona, two wins at the Twelve Hours of Sebring, and three top-flight titles in Grand-Am and IMSA – the 2017 season, which featured five straight victories to open the season including maiden Daytona and Sebring wins for Cadillac, and a DPi Championship for his sons, Ricky and Jordan, might still be their proudest achievement.

“After that, we said we could never replicate that again – and which is why we got them separated in IMSA,” Wayne recalled. Ricky went to Penske for a time, then came back to the family team; Jordan left, and went to Corvette Racing for a time; and by 2024 when Jordan returned, they were put in separate cars as the IMSA team expanded.

“Then [Cadillac] asked me to submit an entry under Wayne Taylor Racing, which I thought, ‘There’s no way they’re going to do it!’ And they accepted my entry! And there was no way we could do it without putting the two of them together. Because this is not Daytona, it’s not IMSA – this is the biggest race in the world, and this is the right thing to do!”

Ricky and Jordan Taylor are taking on le Mans together for the first time alongside Filipe Albuquerque. Jakob Ebrey/Getty Images

Ricky and Jordan, who’ve competed at Le Mans several times individually, are racing together at Le Mans for the first time, with their father’s team – joined by another Le Mans veteran in Filipe Albuquerque, Ricky’s co-driver in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

While Ricky hasn’t been to the top step of the Le Mans podium in any category yet, his brother has. Jordan took a famous GTE Pro class win for the factory Corvette Racing team 10 years ago. Albuquerque, meanwhile, won LMP2 for United Autosports in 2020, albeit in a race run ‘behind closed doors’ due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

And they’ll be a part of a four-car effort for Cadillac at Le Mans, that also includes the two full-season WEC cars from Hertz Team JOTA, and the other IMSA at-large invitee, Cadillac Whelen/Action Express Racing. Wayne Taylor, the driver, last competed at Le Mans in 2002 – in the final year of the Northstar LMP project, and he saw former Cadillac partner Chip Ganassi Racing put the then-new V-Series.R on the overall podium two years ago.

“I do believe that there’s strength in having four cars. Cadillac puts enormous resources behind this,” Wayne said when asked about Cadillac’s chances for the weekend. “I think being paired with JOTA and with Whelen is really good. JOTA, especially, have done WEC and won LMP2 at Le Mans, and so we’re already working together as one.”

Having all of Cadillac’s teams working together as one is the big focus this year for the manufacturer – with the goal being a greater emphasis on cooperation over internal competition, combined with a restructuring of the motorsports leadership positions, and of course, the addition of WTR and JOTA to take Ganassi’s place inside the Cadillac program.

“Completely open book, we share every bit of information,” Wayne Taylor said of the ‘One Cadillac’ concept. “I’m looking at JOTA to sort of be taking the lead for us. Having driven 13 times, the one thing I keep saying to everybody is: What you have to do to win this race – or be on the podium in this race – all you need, you just have to stay on track, and only come in for driver changes, tires, and fuel.

“If we can do that and execute really well, maybe there’s a top-five, maybe there’s a podium.”

About the logistics of getting the team and its equipment from the U.S. to Le Mans, WTR General Manager Travis Hogue explained: “Like anything, we have a plan, but we have to remain flexible. We basically found out the first part of March that we were going to Le Mans. That changed our projections on what chassis were going where, and their rotation.”

WTR’s preparations for Le Mans week ramped up significantly in the last month. It involved shaking down the team’s new-for-Le Mans chassis (number 023 for those keeping records at home) at the Putnam Park course near Indianapolis. It involved all four of WTR’s full-time IMSA drivers, including Louis Deletraz (occupied with LMP2 commitments at AO by TF), logging laps in Dallara’s simulators at Varano and Indianapolis to gear up for events at two very different circuits, Detroit and Le Mans.

“For us as drivers, it’s good to get a little taste of what it’s going to be like when we get there. It’s obviously going to be our first time there in a Cadillac,” Jordan Taylor said.

He described the sim preparation as him and his co-drivers “getting up to speed and working on changes to hopefully expedite our learning process, and hopefully hit the ground running a little bit better than we would have been beforehand.”

In total, around 80 people will have made their way from the States to be part of the team’s first Le Mans voyage, plus a generous package of spares that was shipped over from Detroit, and will return in time for the Six Hours of the Glen the following week.

Hogue even suggested that Taylor should spend less time trying to manage the team and more time enjoying the moment, but Taylor insisted on being along the pit wall, on the radio with his drivers.

“It’s like drinking water out of a fire hose!” Wayne exclaimed. “But I’ve got such a great team of people, drivers, and support from Cadillac.

“It’s the biggest thing for me. So I’m also going to just take it all in, and I’m not going to get myself stressed, because everything that we can do – in terms of preparation, in terms of the right drivers, how we’re going to execute, how we’re going to strategize – we have this all in our team now.

Now, as a part of the massive TWG Motorsports holding company led by Dan Towriss, WTR’s reunion with Cadillac did give the team its long-awaited Le Mans debut.

But this year in IMSA has been so frustrating at times that you might understand the sentiment of the fans questioning whether gaining a better understanding of the V-Series.R platform and turning around its IMSA season should be the team’s sole focus, instead of pursuing a one-off run at Le Mans mid-season.

“We’ve been struggling. And when you are in a downslide, it’s easy to point fingers,” Albuquerque stated after the Detroit Grand Prix. “When you have some good result, it’s validation – maybe we were struggling with this and that. It just builds momentum and trust in each other. When things are bad, it’s easy to go down.

“But we have been together as a team with Cadillac, which is new people for us – and for us, we are new to them as well. And when things are going better, friendship comes along, trust comes along, and all of this – it builds up.”

Obviously, the mood changed a bit after the Detroit weekend. Ricky Taylor and Albuquerque nearly won in front of General Motors’ global headquarters, but ended up finishing a close second. Still, it was a breakthrough result – the first Cadillac podium in either IMSA or WEC this year.

WTR came close to winning on Cadillac’s home turf. Brett Farmer/IMSA

“It’s the perfect timing, to be honest,” Albuquerque added. “I think it just gives us motivation.

“Everyone is motivated, it’s like, pure passion about the sport. Because they’re working 24 hours, and over 24 hours, they don’t get a break, they don’t get to see their families. We are a little bit spoiled, because we go home for two days and see the family, and then go.

“It’s a big ask for all the engineers, a lot of people and mechanics to travel along. But when things are going well, it’s way easier.”

Even before that result on the Detroit streets, there was still some degree of confidence, from Wayne and from his drivers, that a good result at Le Mans was possible and that they wouldn’t just be giving Cadillac a fourth car at Le Mans to make up the numbers.

“To be real, I want to be spot-on on the strategy, be competitive, be happy about the race pace, like how the car is handling,” Albuquerque said. “And then obviously there are some guys putting a lot of effort into qualifying to qualify just up there, but maybe then in the race, they will struggle again.

“I think we need to focus on ourselves to extract the most out of the car, and then we’ll see where we’ll end up. So obviously we want to finish in the top five, and you know, be fighting up there – otherwise, it makes no sense for us to go there.”

And now that they’ve returned to the podium, their good mood, which betrayed the lacklustre results of the season to that point, has only gotten better.

Should they pull off a somewhat unlikely victory as an invitational team, Ricky and Jordan would become the first American drivers to claim overall victory since Davy Jones in 1996. And Cadillac would become the first American automaker to take an overall Le Mans win since the last of Ford’s wins in 1969.

“Obviously, there have been some Americans who’ve won some of the other classes, but not too many Americans have had the chance to fight for overall wins, especially in competitive situations,” Jordan Taylor said. “So we’re definitely privileged to be in this situation.

“We’re going there to represent Cadillac and race for an overall win. Obviously, last year, the Cadillacs were quite strong – you know, qualifying in the top three, two of the cars, and fighting for a podium at the end of the race. So I think there’s been a lot learned over the past 12 months.

“I think we’re going there with a strong car, a strong package, and hopefully we’ll be able to fight for it.

“Obviously, there will be a lot of pressure with it, but I think that it’s a privilege to have that pressure when we go there, and represent such great brands like Cadillac, and the United States.

“We’re looking forward to it, and I’m very proud to be part of it all.”