In a warning to its rivals, Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA says its breakthrough FIA World Endurance Championship triumph in Brazil last Sunday (13 July) has laid down a marker for the Anglo-American alliance’s long-term ambitions in the series.
In just the partnership’s fifth race together since merging over the winter, Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA sped to a commanding victory in the Rolex 6 Hours of São Paulo, as Alex Lynn, Will Stevens and Norman Nato in the #12 V-Series.R Hypercar led home team-mates Sébastien Bourdais, Earl Bamber and Jenson Button in the #38 entry. The result represented the first top two lockout by an American manufacturer in the history of FIA WEC’s premier class.
“Cadillac showed real grit and pace – securing a one-two finish at Interlagos is a statement,” asserted Cadillac Racing programme manager, Keely Bosn. “This kind of consistency only comes from world-class engineering and well-executed strategies. It wasn’t just a win on the track – it was a win in the garage, in the data room and in every detail of our race prep this season. A magnificent day for Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA.”
The US marque’s previous best finish in FIA WEC competition was third in last year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, but from the moment Lynn claimed the top spot on the starting grid in the Hyperpole shootout in qualifying – the Briton’s second pole position in swift succession in 2025 – the six-hour race around the Autódromo José Carlos Pace was Cadillac’s to lose.
An early drive-through penalty for a tyre pressure infringement cost Stevens the best part of half-a-minute and dropped the #12 prototype to fourth, but the 34-year-old unleashed a scintillating turn-of-speed to haul himself right back onto the leaders’ tail by the end of his stint behind the wheel, and when Lynn then took over inside the cockpit, he returned to the track in first place. It was an advantage the crew would not subsequently relinquish.
Thereafter commanding proceedings, the #12 Cadillac went on to take the chequered flag just under a minute clear of the sister V-Series.R to cement a milestone maiden success for the Michigan-based brand, while maintaining JOTA’s impressive record of winning a race in every FIA WEC campaign it has contested.
“Honestly, it’s just amazing for everyone involved,” enthused Stevens, who posted fastest lap to-boot. “The penalty made things a little bit more difficult, but we knew we had strong pace and we recovered very well.
“The team did a super job, and it’s very special to get our first win with Cadillac so early on in our journey together and to continue the tradition of winning races with JOTA every year. I’m very proud to be a part of this programme. It’s a long-term project and we’re still only at the beginning. A goal for this year was to win a race, but we have even greater aspirations to keep on winning and tick off the big boxes that we want to achieve.”
“It’s never easy to win, but honestly, the package we had was very, very strong,” added Nato, who celebrated a first outright FIA WEC triumph after missing the Spa-Francorchamps round in 2024 when JOTA prevailed. “I felt very comfortable in the car and we had good communication inside the team.
“Since Imola, we’ve kept on improving and learning from our mistakes. Fourth at Le Mans was quite a good performance for such a new project, but obviously, we wanted more and to have this kind of moment in Brazil is special. We didn’t give up after the drive-through, and we kept pushing until the end. Big thanks to everyone involved for all their hard work. This is a weekend we will definitely remember – and it’s just the beginning...”
Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year – and maiden campaign as part of a factory programme – JOTA Sport has become the first team to win outright in FIA WEC with two different manufacturers. Despite having to navigate a few bumps in the road earlier on in the season, the British outfit’s co-founder and director Sam Hignett is delighted with progress so far – while highlighting how much of a team effort the victory was.
“The drivers all did an amazing job, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg,” he stressed. “It’s very important that we acknowledge the team on the ground and the hundreds of people behind-the-scenes at JOTA, General Motors, Cadillac and Dallara that make this happen. All of the credit needs to go to them as well, because without them, we wouldn’t be where we are now.
“We spent a lot of time in free practice working on tyre degradation, which is where our real advantage was over the last ten to 15 laps of each double stint – that’s where we were able to pull the big time gap. The expectation was always to win in the first year [of the partnership] and then go for the championship in years two and three, but we need to keep learning and do better in a number of areas because it wasn’t a perfect race.
“Still, to not only win but finish second as well was fantastic. Our Spa victory last season was special because it was our first, but we had a huge dose of luck that enabled it. This, we genuinely won on pace.”
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