Cadillac: Race Proven

The Cadillac ATS-V.R racing in the Pirelli World Challenge is helping make a better Cadillac road car

Racing twice around the clock at Daytona in the new Cadillac DPi-V.R prototype and slugging it out for 50 no-holds-barred minutes on the streets of Long Beach or Detroit might seem worlds apart, but each offers valuable learnings as Cadillac uses the intensity of competition to develop and prove crossover technologies that will help build a better road car.

Those 50-minute sprints are the calling card of the Pirelli World Challenge, a series that Cadillac first entered more than a decade ago. Five drivers' championships and four manufacturers' championships later, it's still going strong.

The ATS-V.R is the third generation of road car-based Cadillac GT racecar to compete in World Challenge. Built to internationally-adopted GT3 rules that limit the modifications a manufacturer can make, the ATS-V.R brought a fourth consecutive drivers' championship to Johnny O'Connell in its 2015 debut season.

"Fans can really relate to a car like the ATS-V.R," says O'Connell. "We're going head-to-head with some of the world's top performance brands –Mercedes, Porsche, Audi, McLaren – and demonstrating the performance credentials of Cadillac. The racing's insane and we're winning, too."

While O'Connell and his teammate, rising star Michael Cooper, are rubbing fenders with some of the best road racers on the planet, Cadillac engineers are gaining relevant knowledge from the ATS-V.R that they can apply to future road cars.

"The Pirelli World Challenge program is a huge opportunity for technology transfer," explains Laura Klauser, Cadillac's program manager for World Challenge. "The ATS-V.R is an ATS-V that's been adapted to be a racecar. It has the same 3.6-liter, twin-turbo technologies, which we do get learnings from, especially in heat management. And as we move forward where fuel economies are going, we're constantly looking for opportunities to take mass out of the car.

"Our learnings from racing go directly into improvements and enhancements for the production car," she adds, citing Performance Traction Management as one key area of development that is moving from racecar to road car.

As well as the knowledge Cadillac gains, racing the ATS-V.R is ongoing proof of the potency of the road car it's based upon.

"These V racecars are very similar to the ones that a customer can buy," says Klauser. "It's an opportunity to say, 'We've proven this car on the race track and we have the championships to back it up. You're getting a supreme machine.'"

Three Generations of Success
In 10 seasons of GT competition in Pirelli World Challenge with three different racecars – CTS-V.R sedan, CTS-V.R coupe and now the ATS-V.R GT3 – Cadillac's earned 31 race wins, four manufacturers' championships and five drivers' championships, including one for Andy Pilgrim in 2005 and four straight for Johnny O'Connell from 2012-15.

In 2016, the second season with the ATS-V.R, O'Connell and teammate Michael Cooper took a combined five wins and 13 other podiums.

"It's all the people who comprise the team," says O'Connell when asked why Cadillac Racing has enjoyed such long-term success.

"For me, to be a part of it and to play a principal role in getting out the message that speaks to the performance characteristics that are Cadillac is a pretty cool thing."