This weekend will see current IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship ace and open-wheel legend Bourdais make his third outing of the season in the FIA World Endurance Championship. He will be competing in the 8 Hours of Bahrain in Vector Sport’s LMP2 Oreca alongside his full-time Ganassi Cadillac teammate van der Zande and Ryan Cullen, the trio having first formed up in Vector’s #10 entry in the 6 Hours of Fuji two months ago.
“It was good for me to get a foot back in WEC because the regulations, the way they run the races is so different with all the procedures, the safety cars and the slow zones,” said Bourdais who raced for Vector in this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans with Cullen and Nico Muller. “It was good to do Le Mans, which is kind of a beast on its own with regulations and procedures, and the cherry on top of the cake was to get Renger with me for Japan and Bahrain.
Bourdais and van der Zande won three IMSA races this year in the Ganassi-run #01 V-Performance Academy Cadillac DPi-V.R, and will team up again in IMSA’s new Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) category with the Cadillac V-LMDh hybrid for 2023. Meanwhile their 2022 IMSA teammates, Earl Bamber and Alex Lynn, will transfer to the WEC for next season to race another Ganassi Cadillac V-LMDh along with Richard Westbrook.
Continued Bourdais: “The more races you do together, the more interactions you have, the more work you do together, the more you understand who needs what and how much and you fine-tune that relationship to get it exactly where you need it. It really helps to extract every bit out of the group and the car and the whole system to perfect the potential of everything coming in 2023, so it was a good opportunity.
“It’s been an enjoyable year with Renger and perfecting that relationship and having more knowledge of one another is always a plus.”
Van der Zande, who amassed eight wins in the now obsolete Cadillac DPi-V.R, concurred with the reasoning of his co-star. For him, racing at Fuji with Bourdais and Cullen was his first return to WEC's LMP2 ranks since contesting the 2021 season for Inter Europol Competition.
“I think it’s good because we don’t have any IMSA races until January when we go for the big one [Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona], so any race is good to keep you in the rhythm, keep you thinking, keep you on your toes to extract the last bit of lap time out of the car,” he said. “My understanding with Seb is really good; we get along well. I couldn’t have wished for anything else.
“He’s very fast, nice to work with and I think we’ve found a nice balance between two different characters. We both know who we are, what we are, and we both accept who the other is, in the way that we make the most out of it.”
