Earl Bamber and Alex Lynn will drive the Ganassi-run #2 Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh as a duo in this month’s Imola 6 Hours, round two of the 2024 WEC.
Final confirmation of an arrangement that bucks the trend of running three drivers in all races in Hypercar, as well as in LMP1 before it, came on Tuesday with the publication of the entry list for the Italian WEC round on 21 April.
Team founder Chip Ganassi outlined to Motorsport.com at the Daytona 24 Hours IMSA SportsCar Championship season-opener in January an intent to run just two drivers in the Cadillac Racing WEC entry in the shorter races.
He stated a desire on the part of the team to “keep it simple”.
Stephan Mitas, team principal of the German-based Ganassi WEC operation, subsequently elaborated on the plan.
“Over a six-hour race there are some performance benefits to be had,” he explained. “It’s more prep time through free practice, and then over the course of the race, two drivers is a performance gain.”
Officially, however, Cadillac had remained non-committal on plans to run just two drivers in the five six-hour races on the WEC schedule.
#2 Cadillac Racing Cadillac V-Series.R: Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn, Sebastien Bourdais
Photo by: Shameem Fahath
The General Motors brand stated on the announcement that Sebastien Bourdais would be joining Bamber and Lynn for last month’s Qatar 1812Km 10-hour WEC curtain-raiser that the regular duo would be “complemented” by the Frenchman and his full-season IMSA team-mate Renger van der Zande, as well as “select Chip Ganassi Racing team-mates” through the season.
It added that the team would “confirm the third driver ahead of certain endurance races”.
Laura Wontrop Klauser, road racing boss at Cadillac’s parent company General Motors, also stated that the full driver line-up in the WEC V-Series.R will only be confirmed ahead of each race.
Cadillac subsequently announced that IndyCar star Alex Palou will be joining Bamber and Lynn in the vacant seat in the #2 car for the Le Mans 24 Hours WEC round in June.
Scott Dixon will team up with Bourdais and van der Zande in the additional Ganassi entry for Le Mans as part of his continuing role with the team for the long-distance IMSA races.
Cadillac is heading into the Imola race after its disqualification last week from fifth place in Qatar for homologation irregularities.
This will be the final season of the Cadillac/Ganassi partnership in sportscars.
Ganassi revealed last month that a relationship that began in 2021 in IMSA will be ending at the conclusion of the season.
The driver line-ups in the rest of the 37-car WEC entry for Imola remains unchanged from Qatar.