Louis Deletraz has conceded that Toyota was “better” than Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA in the crucial deciding stages of last weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, as he and his co-drivers in the No. 12 car came away with a “disappointing” fourth-place finish.
Despite being in contention all race and leading 128 laps of an eventual 381, the most of any Hypercar entry, the No. 12 Cadillac V-Series.R shared by Deletraz, Will Stevens and Norman Nato missed out on a spot on the podium by 12 seconds, finishing 32 seconds down on the winning No. 7 Toyota TR010 Hybrid.
It was the only of the three Cadillacs to finish on the lead lap, as the sister No. 38 JOTA car retired with power steering failure and the Wayne Taylor Racing-entered No. 101 machine wound up two laps down after a slew of penalties in the morning hours.
Looking back on what became a five-hour dash to the flag after the second safety car period of the race, Deletraz said that Cadillac was unable to replicate its strong night-time pace as ambient temperatures rose again on Sunday in the heat of the day.
“We were so strong the whole race, we led most of it until the late morning,” he said. “I can’t deny that the image [of winning] was starting to come into my head, even if I was trying to ignore it. P4 after this is for sure disappointing.”
“The Toyotas were strong the whole race but we had built enough of a buffer through the night to be able to control it. We suffered with a small system glitch in the morning which is why we got a drive-through. These things happen, but we lost some time there.”
“We kept pushing, we never gave up, but at the end the Toyotas had a little bit more than us and we couldn’t quite catch back after the last safety car.”
“I think we were better at night than in the heat. We saw it already at the start. The No. 38 was actually better than us in the heat. But I had a lot of fun.”
“We were constantly fighting the Toyotas and the BMW at the front, and leading a big part of the race was awesome. Obviously everyone is proud of P4, but in everyone’s head there was more. We all wanted that trophy.”
“The big trophy was in the picture for a while and in the end not, but you always hope. At Le Mans there is luck, but also just they were better than us.”
What ultimately consigned to Deletraz, Stevens and Nato to being unable to stand on the podium was a late Full Course Yellow, caused by the No. 23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo breaking down early in Hour 21, that forced both the winning No. 7 Toyota and the No. 12 to take emergency service at their subsequent stops.
When both cars returned to the pits the next time by, the Toyota gained the jump with a shorter stop to the tune of around 15 seconds to the Cadillac, which lost further ground because the FCY was lifted before Nato had left the pit lane.
Although the car was able to go two laps further on fuel than its competitors after that, there was nothing Nato and then Stevens could do to close the gap.
“We were pretty unlucky with the timing of the FCYs because we had to do emergency stops three times,” Deletraz recalled. “The last one, we lost a lot of time there because the track went green while we were still in the pits.”
“If we didn’t take tires, we would have taken 10-12 seconds less, and maybe we would have been back on track before the FCY ended.”
“That’s where we lost touch with the leaders.”
“And looking at the Toyota’s pace at the end, doing 3:25s, 3:26s, we didn’t have quite have that. If we were at the front it could have been a different story because it’s hard to pass.”
“That was our whole strategy. We had track position, we were managing it, and then Le Mans had something else in mind for us.”
