Bamber: Our luck has to change soon...
Despite the disappointing conclusion to the Qatar 1812km for Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA, Earl Bamber is confident that the Anglo-American alliance’s promising performance in the 2025 FIA WEC curtain-raiser augurs well for the season ahead.
Throughout the ‘Prologue’ and race week around Lusail International Circuit, the Cadillac V-Series.R looked like a force to be reckoned with as it embarks upon its third campaign of FIA WEC competition.
A one-two on the opening day of the group test was reinforced by Alex Lynn posting the fastest Hypercar lap in FP2, with the Briton and stablemate Sébastien Bourdais proceeding to secure fourth and fifth on the grid for the ten-hour race.
Although Will Stevens found himself shuffled down to 12th at the start in the #12 entry, and Earl Bamber spun the #38 car to the tail-end of the pack while challenging BMW’s Kevin Magnussen for third on lap ten, a scintillating comeback charge by the New Zealander and a fortuitously-timed Virtual Safety Car intervention subsequently elevated the two Cadillacs to the leading two positions.
Just as the cards seemed to be falling into the team’s hands, however, a disastrous safety car re-start saw Lynn and team-mate Jenson Button make contact, causing damage to both cars and incurring a penalty for the former. A lengthy pit-stop for repairs spelled the end of the #38’s challenge for a points-scoring result, with the #12 ultimately taking the chequered flag eighth.
“We led the race, so that’s always a positive and we showed good pace in Qatar,” reflected Bamber. “It was obviously a shame about what happened, but the car is quick. The people back in Detroit and Charlotte are doing some great work on it as well, constantly pushing the boundaries and developing, and what JOTA brings to the project is really exciting. They’ve got great knowledge of FIA WEC in general, and I think that makes it a stouter effort.
“We’re hoping that with the injection of JOTA’s knowledge, we can raise our game on the circuits where we’ve got a little bit of low-hanging fruit and have a strong season overall. Everyone is really eager to get out on-track again – eyes forward with a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of expectation to do well. If we keep going in the same direction, we’ll be good. We have to have a nice streak soon...”
Bourdais echoed those remarks, while cautioning that the team still has some work to do to optimise its package in cooler temperatures.
“Earl showed a lot of pace early on, and I think our car was a lot better in the warmer conditions – when it cooled off, we seemed to lose track with the lead pack, independently of the incident we had,” the Frenchman mused.
“We live and learn. We’ve run a full race, both cars finished and, although it wasn’t the result we wanted, we learned a huge amount about the set-up and race performance. This is a new organisation, but we have plenty of potential to extract out of the system. We’ll take a good look at all the data and try to learn more about the car that we can take into Imola.”
