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By
RJ OConnell - Jun 9, 2025, 11:36 AM EDT
Wayne Taylor Racing ready for its big moment at Le Mans
Even after the blue No. 101 Cadillac V-Series.R was pushed through public scrutineering in the city centre of Le Mans over the weekend, the magnitude of the occasion hadnt quite sunk in for the Wayne Taylor Racing crew.
"I mean, there's really no words to describe this," Wayne Taylor told RACER on Friday during scrutineering. But the often quotable, sometimes blunt team owner, who won his class at Le Mans as a driver in 1998, will surely find the words in time. He always does.
The confirmation of Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing's Le Mans debut came in March and had been years in the making. Taylor himself hadn't been exactly elusive about his desire to take his team to the race from the first year of the LMDh platform.
But it became clear that WTR's previous partners at Acura/Honda Racing Corporation didn't have the FIA World Endurance Championship or Le Mans in their short-term plans. That facilitated WTR's return to Cadillac and General Motors after a brief period apart.
And of all the accolades that Taylor's team has accomplished since its inception in 2004 five overall wins in the Rolex 24 At Daytona, two wins at the Twelve Hours of Sebring, and three top-flight titles in Grand-Am and IMSA the 2017 season, which featured five straight victories to open the season including maiden Daytona and Sebring wins for Cadillac, and a DPi Championship for his sons, Ricky and Jordan, might still be their proudest achievement.
"After that, we said we could never replicate that again and which is why we got them separated in IMSA," Wayne recalled. Ricky went to Penske for a time, then came back to the family team; Jordan left, and went to Corvette Racing for a time; and by 2024 when Jordan returned, they were put in separate cars as the IMSA team expanded.
"Then [Cadillac] asked me to submit an entry under Wayne Taylor Racing, which I thought, 'There's no way they're going to do it!' And they accepted my entry! And there was no way we could do it without putting the two of them together. Because this is not Daytona, it's not IMSA this is the biggest race in the world, and this is the right thing to do!"
Ricky and Jordan Taylor are taking on le Mans together for the first time alongside Filipe Albuquerque. ...Hey, is that the Goodrich blimp? Jakob Ebrey/Getty ImagesRicky and Jordan, who've competed at Le Mans several times individually, are racing together at Le Mans for the first time, with their father's team joined by another Le Mans veteran in Filipe Albuquerque, Ricky's co-driver in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
While Ricky hasn't been to the top step of the Le Mans podium in any category yet, his brother has. Jordan took a famous GTE Pro class win for the factory Corvette Racing team 10 years ago. Albuquerque, meanwhile, won LMP2 for United Autosports in 2020, albeit in a race run 'behind closed doors' due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
And they'll be a part of a four-car effort for Cadillac at Le Mans, that also includes the two full-season WEC cars from Hertz Team JOTA, and the other IMSA at-large invitee, Cadillac Whelen/Action Express Racing. Wayne Taylor, the driver, last competed at Le Mans in 2002 in the final year of the Northstar LMP project, and he saw former Cadillac partner Chip Ganassi Racing put the then-new V-Series.R on the overall podium two years ago.
"I do believe that there's strength in having four cars. Cadillac puts enormous resources behind this," Wayne said when asked about Cadillac's chances for the weekend. "I think being paired with JOTA and with Whelen is really good. JOTA, especially, have done WEC and won LMP2 at Le Mans, and so we're already working together as one."
Having all of Cadillac's teams working together as one is the big focus this year for the manufacturer - with the goal being a greater emphasis on cooperation over internal competition, combined with a restructuring of the motorsports leadership positions, and of course, the addition of WTR and JOTA to take Ganassi's place inside the Cadillac program.
"Completely open book, we share every bit of information," Wayne Taylor said of the 'One Cadillac' concept. "I'm looking at JOTA to sort of be taking the lead for us. Having driven 13 times, the one thing I keep saying to everybody is: What you have to do to win this race or be on the podium in this race all you need, you just have to stay on track, and only come in for driver changes, tires, and fuel.
"If we can do that and execute really well, maybe there's a top-five, maybe there's a podium."
About the logistics of getting the team and its equipment from the U.S. to Le Mans, WTR General Manager Travis Hogue explained: "Like anything, we have a plan, but we have to remain flexible. We basically found out the first part of March that we were going to Le Mans. That changed our projections on what chassis were going where, and their rotation."
WTR's preparations for Le Mans week ramped up significantly in the last month. It involved shaking down the team's new-for-Le Mans chassis (number 023 for those keeping records at home) at the Putnam Park course near Indianapolis. It involved all four of WTR's full-time IMSA drivers, including Louis Deletraz (occupied with LMP2 commitments at AO by TF), logging laps in Dallara's simulators at Varano and Indianapolis to gear up for events at two very different circuits, Detroit and Le Mans.
"For us as drivers, it's good to get a little taste of what it's going to be like when we get there. It's obviously going to be our first time there in a Cadillac," Jordan Taylor said.
He described the sim preparation as him and his co-drivers "getting up to speed and working on changes to hopefully expedite our learning process, and hopefully hit the ground running a little bit better than we would have been beforehand."
In total, around 80 people will have made their way from the States to be part of the team's first Le Mans voyage, plus a generous package of spares that was shipped over from Detroit, and will return in time for the Six Hours of the Glen the following week.
Hogue even suggested that Taylor should spend less time trying to manage the team and more time enjoying the moment, but Taylor insisted on being along the pit wall, on the radio with his drivers.
"It's like drinking water out of a fire hose!" Wayne exclaimed. "But I've got such a great team of people, drivers, and support from Cadillac.
"It's the biggest thing for me. So I'm also going to just take it all in, and I'm not going to get myself stressed, because everything that we can do in terms of preparation, in terms of the right drivers, how we're going to execute, how we're going to strategize we have this all in our team now.
Now, as a part of the massive TWG Motorsports holding company led by Dan Towriss, WTR's reunion with Cadillac did give the team its long-awaited Le Mans debut.
But this year in IMSA has been so frustrating at times that you might understand the sentiment of the fans questioning whether gaining a better understanding of the V-Series.R platform and turning around its IMSA season should be the team's sole focus, instead of pursuing a one-off run at Le Mans mid-season.
"We've been struggling. And when you are in a downslide, it's easy to point fingers," Albuquerque stated after the Detroit Grand Prix. "When you have some good result, it's validation maybe we were struggling with this and that. It just builds momentum and trust in each other. When things are bad, it's easy to go down.
"But we have been together as a team with Cadillac, which is new people for us and for us, we are new to them as well. And when things are going better, friendship comes along, trust comes along, and all of this it builds up."
Obviously, the mood changed a bit after the Detroit weekend. Ricky Taylor and Albuquerque nearly won in front of General Motors' global headquarters, but ended up finishing a close second. Still, it was a breakthrough result the first Cadillac podium in either IMSA or WEC this year.