Cadillac will use a car that looks very much like this to challenge for a Le Mans win next year. And it's got a unique 5.5-liter DOHC V-8.
In the IMSA DPi era, Cadillac’s DPi-V.R has set the standard. With the DPi-V.R, Cadillac has won three championships, and every major endurance race, including the Rolex 24 at Daytona four times in a row. Now, DPi is giving way for LMDh—a new prototype class created by IMSA and the ACO, the governing body of the 24 Hours of Le Mans—and Cadillac is previewing its next prototype, with this, the Project GTP Hypercar. This is a show car, but Road & Track understands it is broadly representative of the machine Cadillac will bring to Daytona, Le Mans, and beyond next year.
Yes, Le Mans. Cadillac will return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time since 2002, when it competed with the Northstar LMP. The automaker will run a full World Endurance Championship season with its LMDh car, in addition to competing in the IMSA WeatherTech series. Chip Ganassi Racing and Action Express Racing will campaign the cars, though Cadillac isn’t saying who’s running the car in Europe.
Cadillac isn’t releasing a ton of technical details on the car, though it said it’s powered by an “all-new” 5.5-liter DOHC V-8. We asked GM’s sports-car racing head Laura Klauser if it’s based on the LT6.R, the flat-plane, DOHC 5.5-liter V-8 that powers the Corvette C8.R. She just said “it’s brand new.”
Klauser did explain why Cadillac is developing a new engine for the LMDh car, rather than reusing the Small Block-based V-8 of the DPi car. “We wanted to make sure that we brought forth the best possible solution from an engine package to make sure that we were competitive and we had the right pairing with the chassis versus trying to make something that we already had work,” she said. “When you have such an opportunity like this and you look at the competition that’s coming, you wanna bring the best possible package.”
LMDh engine regulations are fairly open. The engine obviously has to fit within the chassis and lineup with a spec hybrid transaxle, and there are other dimensional requirements, but it doesn’t need to be production based. The rev limit is set at 10,000 rpm and it must be no louder than 110 decibels in drive-by testing. To balance out the various LMDh cars and cars built to the ACO and FIA’s LMH ruleset, power output at the rear axle will be set between 644 and 697 hp. Manufacturers can choose how much that power comes from the internal-combustion engine, and from the electric motor.
The Project GTP looks quite a bit different than the DPi-V.R, and that’s a reflection of the LMDh rules, which specify a lower, wider car than a DPi, and allow more design freedom with the bodywork. “From day one, we were involved very heavily alongside Dallara and Cadillac Racing in developing this platform,” says Chris Mikalauskus, lead exterior creative designer for Cadillac Design. With the DPi car, the Cadillac Design team came in later in the process and didn’t have as much creative freedom. “This is really an opportunity for us to create a really unique design statement as well as being able to really show off our brand’s DNA when we’re out there on grid with a bunch of other OEMs it’s, it’s gonna allow for really exciting racing because they’re not gonna all just look like cookie cutters of one another anymore.”
Backing up his point is BMW’s recently revealed M Hybrid V8 LMDh car, which uses a Dallara chassis like the Cadillac, but looks quite different. Mikalauskus also said that this race car previews design details on future Cadillac performance cars. Cadillac is also pushing for the transparent engine-cover fin to be on the final race car, too.
Of course, this is not simply a styling exercise. Mikalauskas is quick to point out that while there’s always push and pull between designers and engineers on a road car, it’s a different story on a race car. “Laura always wins,” he said. “Any time a race car is slow, nobody cares how good it looks.”
Klauser confirmed that the race car will have its first on-track test later this month, with a lot more running to come before it makes its race debut at Daytona next January. The final product could be somewhat different from the show car you see here, depending on how testing goes and what the car needs.
Cadillac is starting off from a strong place, being the dominant manufacturer in the DPi era, but there will be a lot of competition next year. In the U.S., Cadillac will once again go up against Acura, as well as BMW and Porsche, with Lamborghini joining the fray in 2024. In the WEC, it will compete in the hypercar class with Porsche, Ferrari, Toyota, Glickenhaus, Peugeot, and possibly more. Dominance like Cadillac Racing has come to expect may not come so easy.
Keyword: The Cadillac Project GTP Hypercar Is a Gorgeous Race Car With an All-New V-8