Wayne Taylor Racing’s switch from Acura to Cadillac machinery doesn’t make the job of defending the team’s Sebring win from last year that much harder, Jordan Taylor told reporters.
“I don’t think it changes much. We’ve had a long history at this race. I think our first 12 hour was 2014 as a team. So a lot of history at the track in the event that we can rely on changing manufacturer,” said Taylor, in response to a question asked by Motorsport Week, on whether the change in manufacturer impacts WTR’s chances of defending the Sebring win harder.
The team, founded by Taylor’s father Wayne Taylor, himself a former racing driver, won Sebring last year with Taylor, Louis Deletraz, and Colton Herta driving the #40 Acura ARX-06.
However, for this year they have switched from Acura to Cadillac, becoming a General Motors factory team for the 2025 IMSA Sportscar Championship.
They previously used Cadillac machinery in the DPi era, so this is in some ways a return to the GM fold after a few years away.
The team’s first race with the Cadillac V-Series.R, at Daytona in January, didn’t go plan. Deletraz crashed the #40 car at turn 1 when the race restarted mid way through the 24 hours, with the car needing to be retired as a result.
The sister #10 car, of Filipe Albuquerque, Brendon Hartley, Will Stevens and Ricky Taylor, J. Taylor’s brother, finished fifth, a lap down.
A learning process with Cadillac
“[There’s] a lot to learn, but I think with this class being around for three years now, the Cadillac group can kind of bring us up to speed extremely quickly and help from learning the setup side, the systems side, how to strategize all those things when we go to this event,” continued Taylor.
“I think we have a big head start. Let’s say if we got a Cadillac last year, it would have been way more difficult, but I think we’re going into it well prepared.”
Meanwhile, Deletraz said: “I think it’s very interesting to have the switch because you learn from both sides and you can see the good and the bad.
“We’ve been very fortunate to be well prepared, spend time in the sim, and GM has really brought us up to speed fast. Early in the season, we were still discovering things, but we feel much more ready to go into Sebring.
“Definitely we keep learning every time we’re out on track, but I wouldn’t say the change is drastic. I think probably in the short term we’ll gain performance by being able to just work all together.”
Deletraz made the decisive move last year with just minutes left in the race, overtaking Sebastien Bourdais, in the #01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V-Series.R, to take the win. He’d previously overtaken Porsche’s Felipe Nasr to move up to second.
With the race starting Saturday 10:10am local time, or 2:10 UTC, we’ll have to see whether Taylor, Deletraz, and their teammate Brendon Hartley, can defend the win for Wayne Taylor Racing, and take the team’s first win back with Cadillac.
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