WEC News: Q&A with Cadillac’s Dieter Gass

An interview with Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA team principal Dieter Gass (pictured), former head of Audi Motorsport, following the Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA 1-2 finish in Brazil.

Q: First year as a factory team, five races in, a lot to digest and learn, and now a second consecutive pole and double podium. You must be quite proud?

Gass: “Well, it was a fantastic day for us really, for everybody at JOTA and GM, everybody was really craving for that success. And the car was fast. We’ve seen that many times already last year, but the results didn’t come until Sunday.

“Everything was falling together and we even managed to get a one-two, which is really something absolutely outstanding.”

Q: With your long involvement in global motorsports, you know it’s not easy or quick to put together a successful program. Would you speak to some of the things that have gelled for JOTA and GM?

Gass: “I think, at the end of the day, we’re still learning. You have to admit that. In Sāo Paulo, everything fell together nicely so that was good, but we’re still learning. I mean five races into that program, into that cooperation with Cadillac is not a lot.

“There’s still plenty of things to discover as well as plenty of things to improve. So, obviously, I’m not going to sit back and relax. We’re going to try and move on and hopefully carry on that way.”

Q: From the competition side, the engineering side, the drivers, open communication, is it difficult to make those things mesh quickly and be on the same page?

Gass: “I think open and transparent communication has always been a JOTA thing. We have always done that from day one. We have been pushing that as well in the cooperation with GM and with the IMSA teams, because we have seen it as well in the previous years with where we were a customer team with a different manufacturer.

“In the first year, they were struggling a lot. I think they were benefiting from us getting original information, but at the end of the day, between year one and year two, they made a big step and that was mainly because they managed to coordinate the two programs in IMSA and WEC. And this is something that we could observe from the first row, basically.

“And that was one of the reasons why we have been pushing that from the beginning, why we are interested in doing that and why we’re going to continue pushing that. But there’s still plenty of things to learn as well with the drivers for me is still a reasonably big thing as well because if we know everybody’s super emotional with a thing and especially the drivers when they’re in the car.

“For me, personally, there’s still a lot to be understood on how they think, how they work and how to effectively get the best out of them.”

Notes

* The No. 12 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA V-Series.R is the only of FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) Hypercar entry to score points in each of the five races.

2025 Hyperpole participants                    Results top 10

* Hyperpole2

* Cadillac, in its third year of WEC Hypercar competition covering 20 races, sits second in the Manufacturers’ Championship with three races left. It gained two positions with the Sāo Paulo results.

* The No. 12 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA V-Series.R (Alex Lynn, Norman Nato, Will Stevens) moved up three positions to third (68 points) in the Drivers’ Championship and is 37 points out of the lead with a maximum 91 points available over three races.

* The No. 12 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA V-Series.R, which has started from the pole the past two races, is the only Hypercar entry to qualify in the top 10 in each race.

* The victory Sunday was Cadillac Racing’s 32nd (IMSA/WEC since joining prototype competition in 2017).

* Cadillac Racing has 235 podiums (IMSA/WEC) since 2017