Cadillac Dominated the Street Circuit in the DPi Era; Will That Still Be the Case?
By John Oreovicz
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Horses for courses.
That’s a succinct way of summing up Cadillac’s domination of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach during the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s Daytona Prototype international (DPi) era from 2017-22.
Gliding over the bumpy street circuit like a limousine, the Cadillac DPi racecar racked up a perfect five-for-five record at Long Beach in that period, to the frustration of the rest of the competition in IMSA’s top prototype class. Cadillac’s smooth beach cruising form reached its peak last year, when pole winner Sebastien Bourdais fell to the back of the pack after an early mistake, yet he and co-driver Renger van der Zande raced their way back to victory.
But this year, it’s a whole new ballgame. The introduction of IMSA’s new Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) formula that replaced DPi has leveled the playing field. Two races in, Acura and Cadillac each has a win. Not only that, Porsche and BMW have joined the fray, fielding GTP cars that showed a fair turn of speed during the WeatherTech Championship’s season-opening Florida swing.
If what transpired at last month’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring offers any indication, Cadillac may have a much tougher fight on its hands this year at Long Beach. Sure, Cadillac took its sixth win in the last eight Sebring races with the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Racing V-Series.R and drivers Pipo Derani, Alexander Sims and Jack Aitken. But the race looked likely to be decided between Acura and Porsche until an accident with less than half an hour remaining took out the top three GTP entries and produced an unexpected Cadillac-BMW 1-2 finish.
Bourdais, who put on a scintillating display at Long Beach last year, believes he and van der Zande will face much harsher competition as this year’s campaign unfolds.
“Obviously 2023 is a big reset,” he said. “The Cadillac was always labeled as the car to beat at Sebring and street courses because it wasn’t super ride-height sensitive. We were very strong all day long at Sebring, but it seemed like at the end of the race, both the Acura and the Porsche were better on short runs, to be honest. Maybe we would have been in trouble at the end because our car kind of came alive from mid-stint onward.
“I think now we are seeing cars of a different generation that are conceptually closer together,” Bourdais continued. “I don’t think we’ll see the road course monster vs. the street course monster, which made it very difficult for the series to balance them as far as performance. I think it will be more open everywhere, and I just hope we’re on the right side of the fence at most events.”
Filipe Albuquerque co-drove to two of Cadillac’s Long Beach wins (in 2018 and ‘19), but for the last two years has been part of the chasing pack. He, co-driver Ricky Taylor and endurance driver Louis Deletraz rank second in the GTP standings in the No. 10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-06 after two races, 10 points behind the No. 31 Cadillac crew.
Albuquerque is convinced that cooperative development between chassis manufacturer ORECA and Honda Performance Development has made the Acura ARX-06 much more consistent and forgiving than its ARX-05 predecessor built to DPi specifications.
“Ricky and I always liked coming to Long Beach – it’s a nice city, a nice area – but we always knew we would struggle when we put on the helmet. That’s not any more the case,” said Albuquerque.
“I must say I’m very optimistic about it. I think it will be more competitive across all the manufacturers. I think we’ll be way closer. You can see clearly that we are all much more packed up than before. Before, Acura was always dominant on one kind of track and Cadillac more dominant in Long Beach and street courses. Now, at least after two races, we could see that everyone is within a tenth.”
While Acura and Cadillac emerged with the first two race wins of the season, had things gone slightly different, Porsche Penske Motorsport might have been celebrating its first GTP era victory at Sebring. And BMW M Team RLL’s GTP program, which received the green light for development much later than the competition, clearly made huge strides between Daytona and Sebring.
Much of each manufacturer’s focus was on reliability for the first two endurance races of the season. Now the emphasis can shift to outright speed, whether over a single lap or over the rapid-fire stints of a sprint race.
“At Daytona, some manufacturers were more ready than others,” Albuquerque noted. “It’s very interesting to see the steps up from each manufacturer. I think we could see the biggest evolution was from BMW. They were way closer (at Sebring) in terms of ultimate lap performance.
“But by the end of the season, we expect to see everybody super packed up,” he added. “We never underestimate, just because we started a little bit better than others. It’s just a question of time. We could see that Porsche and Cadillac were strong from time to time in some stints at Daytona and they proved that in Sebring. We just need to focus on our job and make our own car better.”
Van der Zande, the defending Long Beach co-winner, knows that he, Bourdais and Cadillac will need to dig deep if they want to repeat on the streets.
“I do think that things are much closer,” he said. “What you saw at Sebring and Daytona is it’s pretty close. Going to Long Beach, I think it’s a new starting level. I have a strong feeling that it is more equal than ever before.”
Qualifying for the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach streams live on Peacock and IMSA.com/TVLive at 8:10 p.m. ET Friday. Live race coverage starts at 5 p.m. Saturday on USA Network.