Cadillac has confirmed the four full-season drivers, for the 2023 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande will continue at Chip Ganassi Racing. The French and Dutch drivers were teamed up for the 2022 season, after Kevin Magnussen left the team after only a single season. The collaboration between Bourdais and van der Zande has resulted in wins on the streets of Long Beach and Detroit, with the pairing currently sitting third in the DPi Championship standings.
Action Express Racing will run the other Cadillac V-LMDh car in IMSA in 2023. The team is currently racing with the Whelen Engineering colours, and they will keep Pipo Derani, while Alexander Sims is new to the team. Derani has raced for AXR since 2019, where the first seasons were alongside Felipe Nasr. Nasr was then hired by Porsche, and has raced in the FIA WEC for Team Penske since the start of 2022. Derani started the 2022 season with Tristan Nunez, who was swapped for Olivier Pla mid-season.
Photo: Cadillac Racing
Pla will be swapped out with Sims, who moves over from a different seat in the GM concern. Sims has been an endurance driver for Corvette Racing, when they needed a third driver for the C8.R in GTE or GTD Pro. Sims has IMSA experience from doing several seasons for BMW Team RLL, followed by Formula E.
The endurance drivers for the 2023 season haven’t been named yet.
Cadillac will enter the FIA World Endurance Championship too, but the drivers for that Chip Ganassi Racing run programme haven’t been announced yet. Earl Bamber and Alex Lynn are currently teammates in the #02 in the IMSA series, and both drivers have experience from the FIA WEC, so they would be an obvious choice.
The teams will do their first collective LMDh test in the week following Petit Le Mans, which is held at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta in one and a half weeks’ time.
