Wayne Taylor Racing hungry for more from its second GTP season with Cadillac

So much was promised from Wayne Taylor Racing’s first year back with General Motors since 2019. Instead, for the second time in three years, WTR went the entire IMSA season without winning in GTP. In some ways, it was doubly disappointing, as the team operates two entries.

It all just seemed so unfitting of Cadillac Racing’s push for further cooperation between the two teams running three cars under the philosophy of “One Cadillac,” because when the 2025 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship wrapped up, only the Cadillac Whelen/Action Express team was able to deliver victories in the final two endurance races at Indianapolis and Road Atlanta's Petit Le Mans.

“We know last year was sort of a learning year, with a new car for us,” said Louis Deletraz, driver of the black and white No. 40 WTR Cadillac. “I think we come here way more ready, because we have our own data, we know the car, we’ve tested here.

Deletraz, who shares WTR's No. 40 with Jordan Taylor (pictured), is confident a year's worth of familiarity with the V-Series.R will yield significant benefits. Brandon Badraoui/Lumen via Getty Images

“Clearly, we were not where we wanted to be last year, and the work has been done this winter to start the season strong and fight for a championship. Ultimately, we want to fix all the little issues we had last year.”

As Cadillac Whelen soared to second in the GTP standings – and Cadillac’s new WEC team, Hertz Team JOTA, got the manufacturer’s first victory in that series – both WTR cars languished in sixth and ninth in the standings. While the team placed second three times between the two cars, it never reached the top step of the GTP podium.

Even WTR’s GTD Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 was able to have the good fortune to win a race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park despite all its bad luck.

The tempo for such a disappointing season was set nearly halfway into last year’s Rolex 24 At Daytona when, after guest driver Kamui Kobayashi pulled off the best overtaking sequence of the race, Deletraz lost control of his No. 40 Cadillac on cold tires, spun and set off a brutal chain-reaction crash. The No. 10 Cadillac, meanwhile, plugged along to an anonymous top-five finish.

WTR won’t have Kobayashi or Brendon Hartley available for this year’s Rolex 24, so it’s on Deletraz and the other established WTR drivers to write the team’s redemption story.

“It definitely was tougher than we all wanted,” said Delètraz. “I think in a few races we lacked pace, and of course, it’s a lot harder to win when you don’t have pace. That was a big focus for this season.

“Wayne Taylor Racing is a big team. It has many talented people. I think it was just about putting it all together – which we started towards the end of the season – and then competing for podiums, and we’re up there. We want to carry this on into the start of 2026.”

Cadillac hasn’t rested on its laurels with the 2026 V-Series.R update. A new all-Brembo braking system, and a heavily revised aerodynamic package that will see the low-slung rear wing as its adjustable aero device, and incorporating a new splitter with no dive planes to break off in car-to-car contact. If it works as intended, it should make the car more adaptable, more effective in dirty air and quicker to the punch out of the pits and on restarts.

The WTR drivers are encouraged by what they've seen in testing of Cadillac's revised aero package. Jake Galstad/IMSA

Ricky Taylor, the oldest of the Taylor boys and a two-time overall winner of the Rolex 24, likes the changes made with the new update package.

“We have a big book of things we’ve learned from last year, obviously,” said Taylor. “The tool we had in the past for balancing aero was always on one end of the spectrum. It was never really a tuning tool. Where now, I feel like we’ve got something we can use track to track, hopefully. We still don’t know a ton about how to optimize the car aerodynamically. The aero map of how we want to run the car is still somewhat in development. But it’s definitely a more powerful tool than we had in the past.

“The brake update was targeting a couple different things – even down to the system side, how they manage temps and things,” he continued. “And it seems to be checking all the boxes of what they wanted to do.”

On the driver side, Wayne Taylor Racing has opted for continuity. Ricky stays with Filipe Albuquerque in the No. 10, Jordan Taylor stays with Deletraz in the No. 40. Will Stevens brings experience with the V-Series.R in WEC to an endurance role in the No. 10 car. Only new Cadillac Formula 1 team reserve driver Colton Herta is new to this car, but he’s driven with the No. 40 team to a 12 Hours of Sebring win before during WTR’s previous alliance with Acura.

So, all the ingredients appear to be in place for Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing to turn things around right away in 2026 and take the team’s sixth overall victory in the Rolex 24 at Daytona. After last year’s struggles, though, Taylor won’t make any presumptions about a 2026 turnaround before the season kicks off next weekend.

“To be realistic, we don’t believe in the improvement until we see it on track," he said. "I’m a bit skeptical of everything we’ve learned – you know, it all sounds good, but we have to prove it on track.

“I think there’s no doubt we’ll be better than last year. But just how much that is, we just have to prove it to ourselves, as much as everybody else.”