IMSA WEATHERTECH SPORTSCAR CHAMPIONSHIP: MOTUL PETIT LE MANS

October 12, 2024

Sebastien Bourdais

Scott Dixon

Rengervander Zande

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Good evening, everybody. We are pleased to be joined by the first of many interview subjects this evening.

The winners of the 27th annual Motul Petit Le Mans are, from your left to right, Rengervander Zande, Sebastien Bourdais, and Scott Dixon.

Congratulations.

Renger, why don't you kick it off. Pretty eventful whole race, but even that last stint. Tell us what was going on with the lights there and anything else that happened in the course of the race.

RENGERVANDER ZANDE: Yeah, super happy to finish this off with a bang because it's the last race for Chip Ganassi with Cadillac. It's my last race with Cadillac. I've been with Cadillac for seven years now, which makes me very proud in one way, but also sad to leave.

Nice things come to an end, and this is the right way to come to an end with Cadillac. You know, the last four years was with Chip Ganassi Racing, and Chip has been so nice to me. Michael, Mike O'Gara, the team.

I think this year for the first time really we had what you call team. Everybody was such a good team member, and everybody was working in the same direction.

It's sad that it comes to the an end. We've been racing for three years now. I won with Scott a couple -- two times Daytona? I think so.

We won Once at Daytona, and a lot of other races. And then with Seb for the last three years.

It feels like brothers. We feel like brothers, I think. It's nice to finish this one off with a bang. This win was really good.

If you look at the race, man, I don't know, what can I say? We won.

THE MODERATOR: We'll go to Seb. Had a lot to overcome, including are a penalty early on that you had to come back from. What did it take to make all that happen?

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: I don't know even where to begin, to be honest. I think the best way to say is last year we won the race except the last, what, half hour. This year we lost it all race long, and then we won it for the last 30 minutes.

We kind of put a race together in two years. Yeah, just crazy. I mean, we had a talk sensor issue in qualifying, at the end of qualifying. Lap three, there we go again.

So I did 100 laps with a set of tires and no power. That was very fun. Yeah, it was just what looked like a bit of a lost race, and the guys just managed to get the PPU back under control and give us a chance to be contenders at the end.

Just super happy that, like Renger said, to be able to finish on a high like this. It was a big frustration last year to lose it on the strategy call, which really we couldn't do anything about. We covered just about everybody but the 60, and then they kind of stole it from us.

So this time we may have stolen the race from the 6, but that's only fair I think. We'll definitely take it. Super happy for all the guys at Chip Ganassi Racing and Cadillac and for my two awesome teammates. Yeah, couldn't be a better send-off.

THE MODERATOR: We'll go over to Scott. Obviously you've been a part of a lot of big wins for Chip Ganassi Racing. Where does this one sit?

SCOTT DIXON: It's pretty far out there. I don't think I've been on an emotional roller coaster as much as today. This is what it's all about. It's days like this where I think everybody at GM and Cadillac, Chip Ganassi Racing, within the first five laps, I wasn't sure that we were going to be able to continue on with the issue that we had.

For them to fight through that and continually work on it, and then we had so many other issues throughout the race, but to get back to the lead lap obviously with the late caution, you know, that helped some things.

You know, the fantastic and mega move by Renger at the end there was -- I was up in my bus chilling out, having some food. I started yelling when I saw that. It was very special. But more so for the team.

It's been a pretty up-and-down kind of episode throughout. It was special, man. Really proud to do it with you two. It's a lot. It was a special night for sure.

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. The light thing, it was off and back and then off. Did you do anything to get it back on, or was that the car fixing itself?

RENGERVANDER ZANDE: It was a bit of a disco going on. I like this.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Then you turned on the rain light.

RENGERVANDER ZANDE: You know, this manual we get from Cadillac is a lot of buttons and a lot of options, so I started to press all kinds of buttons this way, and it was still not good enough. Then it stuck more and more and more, then they told me press the white button. So I pressed the white button, and it worked. So we got the lights back.

I don't know how it was, but we got the lights back, and it was quite -- it was more a question of getting a call from inside to come to the pits and change the lights. That was the biggest worry.

The vision was still very good. I raced LMP C for a while where the lights are less than -- with this car, lights off. But when I was driving on my own, it was kind of hard because you couldn't see the curb stones sometimes with the lights off.

When I had cars around me, they kind of lit up the curbs, and I could see it. But we got lucky there. I think at the end it was okay.

Q. We've seen moves like that don't always pay off. It can be risky, but you really went for it. Why there?

RENGERVANDER ZANDE: It was the only move I could make. I was behind Tandy for a while, and he was so fast on the straights. Every time they pulled a gap of like, I don't know, six, seven car lengths. But in the corners we were very fast. Especially we set up the car a lot for turn one and turn three. That's where I could really make up a lot of ground.

I think you guys too, right?

The car was awesome there. And Justin Taylor, our engineer, has been a really good sensor test to see where we can make the car stronger, and it was exactly there.

When I made the move on Nick, it's always a two-way street. I think with high professionals like him, you can do these kind of moves. At the same time it's risky. I think Scott told me I was locking wheels going in.

But, hey, you have to go for it. P2, it doesn't matter here. We're here to win. The only thing I thought is that's not bad for an insurance salesman.

Q. It was really a comeback drive in the heat of the day. How did you all maintain composure? I know, Scott, your stint in particular flew under the radar. You were running 12, 13s throughout. How did you stay focused, especially when there was no yellow, to make up the time?

THE MODERATOR: Scott?

SCOTT DIXON: Yeah, you know, I think you just have to make the most of it. I think that kind of sums up Chip Ganassi Racing. It's the never-give-up situation. And I know even on the INDYCAR side, we've won a lot of races like that, and the same on the IMSA side throughout many years.

Yeah, you are never out of it until you're out of it. You kind of kept waiting for that yellow or that caution that was going to put us right back in the race, but I think we could see throughout the day on any stint with any of the drivers at any point we were making gains on the leaders.

We just needed to get to the pointy end of the field, and I knew that we could have a shot.

But, again, to pull off a move like that, you have to catch someone a little bit asleep, and Renger did it and pulled it off at the perfect moment.

There was definitely a lot of highs throughout the day, but a lot of lows to start as well. Kudos to everybody.

Q. Kind of in the same vein, when that yellow didn't come, we had a long run of green flag running, and you were expecting yellow to be brought back into the fight. What was -- Renger, Sebastien, what was going through your mind? What were the emotions when nothing was happening to bring you all back in?

RENGERVANDER ZANDE: At first -- he can answer that one.

But I have to say everybody was very good on track today, like all the GTs and everybody was very cooperative. There was a good understanding between the drivers I felt more than ever before.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Yeah, it was better for sure. I think Scott pretty much said it. We just kept digging. Obviously we -- I think with the talk sensor issue, we couldn't run a really good GPU control, so we were missing quite a bit of top speed. Our only chance was to maximize and use the car handling that we had all day long.

That got us back in the fight, but we're missing quite a bit of top speed. So it was making things very difficult.

Yeah, we just kept our heads down and, yeah, no, just tried to stick with the front. I think both Scott, myself, and then Renger, we kind of had some moments and just kind of lost time, but overall we were kind of regaining some time on the leader, whoever that was.

It was pretty close with everybody. So we knew we were going to need help, but the goal was to stay in the lead lap at that point and hope that there was going to be a yellow.

When is it that there is not a yellow within the last five hours of racing or four hours of racing? You had to just stay in position knowing that it was 99% sure it was going to happen, and then we saved enough tires at that point to have a shot at it, and Renger just executed like he does at the end of the races.