Fuji pole winner Alex Lynn has revealed that he was “desperate” to give Cadillac its first top spot in World Endurance Championship qualifying after a string of near-misses.
Lynn stated that he “really, really wanted the pole” after qualifying in the top four in the WEC’s Hypercar class every time out since the Spa round in May.
“So many times we’ve missed out by a tenth or this or that; [there are] such fine margins,” said the Briton, who shares the solo Ganassi-run Cadillac V-Series.R with Earl Bamber.
“I feel personally that I have pushed the team really hard to look into the details and to find those micro-seconds. That is how you improve - marginal gains.”
Lynn, who sealed Caddy’s first WEC pole after finding nine tenths on his second push lap to get down to a 1m29.901s, revealed the two qualifying sessions on Saturday had been on “the knife-edge”.
He explained how he had been forced to make a tweak to the rear anti-roll bar after leaving the pits in the opening qualifying period, which he also topped, and then made a wrong call to abort his first flier in Hyperpole.
“We made some changes from Free Practice 3 to give me more front end [bite], but it was a bit more than I anticipated,” said Lynn. “I had to soften the rear rollbar to compensate and luckily it was enough.”
Lynn backed off on his first push lap after encountering Dries Vanthoor in the #15 BMW and admitted that “in hindsight I wish I hadn’t”.
Asked if he was still confident that he could take the pole, Lynn said: “As long as no one improved. The engineer said [the time needed for pole] was a 28.9 and I thought, yep, I’ve got that in me.”
The Englishman described pole position ahead of Toyota on its home track as a “small victory that feels bigger than it is”. He added that it was good “to enjoy the small wins against opposition as strong as this” in Hypercar.
“Not a lot” was Lynn’s reply when asked what it would take to convert the pole into race victory in Sunday’s Fuji 6 Hours.
Cadillac was beaten to fourth place last time out in the WEC at Austin earlier this month by two Ferraris and a Toyota, but Lynn is confident that the V-Series.R will be a contender for victory in Japan.
“I think we are a bit faster than them on long-run pace, so hopefully depending on what they turn up with tomorrow we can be in the mix,” he explained.
The six-hour race at Fuji, the penultimate round of this year’s WEC, begins at 11:00 local time on Sunday.
