Insight: How Cadillac Prepared for Le Mans With “Crucial” Test at Unlikely Venue

Sportscar365's European Editor Stephen Lickorish goes behind the scenes at Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA's pre-Le Mans test...

A cold, drizzly day at Silverstone may not seem the obvious time or place to prepare for the challenge of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Yet the British circuit, and its notoriously changeable weather, was the scene for Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA’s final pre-Le Mans test earlier this month.

Across two days the team experienced a multitude of different conditions as it conducted final preparations for the race, which Cadillac chief engineer Jeromy Moore describes as the manufacturer’s “main goal” for the year.

Silverstone on a chilly day may seem a world away from Circuit de la Sarthe in the summer but Moore says plenty of useful data can still be gathered from testing at the venue.

“It’s got some high-speed content as well as some chicanes – not quite as tight as the Ford Chicane in Le Mans, but we can still gleam aspects from it for what we’re looking into, so it’s a good track,” Moore explains to Sportscar365 about the choice of Silverstone for the test.

Jack Aitken, one of the six JOTA FIA World Endurance Championship drivers to take to the wheel of the Cadillac V-Series.R at Silverstone, adds: “The Porsche Curves at Le Mans and Tertre Rouge fall into a similar category to some of the high-speed stuff here, so that’s good. We can isolate it pretty well for looking at each corner here and bring those learnings across to Le Mans.

“The slow-speed stuff is more common, so almost anywhere we went that would be applicable and then there’s other stuff that’s harder to find like the fact Le Mans is a street circuit, it’s got quite an old surface and you’re not really going to find many places like that, but the high-speed thing is important to tick that box.”