Nobody believed Chip Ganassi Racing would be gone from IMSA competition for long, and they were right. After a one-year absence, the team has returned to the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and the Daytona Prototype international category.
The team’s return includes a driver lineup that features recent Formula One wheelman Kevin Magnussen and two-time Rolex 24 At Daytona winner Renger van der Zande.
They will drive the team’s Cadillac DPi as CGR fills the vacancy left when Wayne Taylor Racing departed the General Motors family to run Acuras this season.
The past is prologue for Chip Ganassi Racing’s return to prototype racing. The team has seven IMSA championships and eight Rolex 24 At Daytona triumphs. Just ask Scott Pruett about his jewelry case full of the coveted Rolex watches.
These feats were not a cakewalk according to CGR managing director Mike Hull.
“We were measured by the competition and it was stiff competition,” Hull said. “Frankly, when we started in DP (Daytona Prototype) racing in 2004, our race team was a solid group of people. I came from an open-wheel background and we did need to learn how to sports car prototype race. That was stiff competition and with the endurance races they handed it to us.
“We did our best just to keep up with those people who had been doing endurance racing for their entire lives.”
The team had a mountain to climb.
“It was a great learning experience. It took us a couple of seasons to do what we thought was how we needed to run those races, but we got there,” Hull explained. “We had a terrific pace of racing once we got going. The pure nature was that it was a lot of fun. We learned a lot about how to be successful from people who were already good at it. We had to move from infancy to adulthood pretty quickly. It was a terrific time for us.”
It’s a different story today.
“We’re really excited about the opportunity to be involved with Cadillac with a terrific driver lineup and our program put back together and it includes some of the people in the building who have been involved in sports car racing,” Hull added.
The Caddys are no strangers to victory either. Last year Cadillac scored its fourth consecutive Rolex 24 victory and also triumphed in the 12 Hours of Sebring at Sebring (Fla.) Int’l Raceway and the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta en route to a second-place finish in the championship. The 12-hour contest went down to the wire in what many say was the most exciting Sebring race in years last November.
Last year, Cadillac won the Rolex 24 victory, the 12 Hours of Sebring, the Grand Prix of Long Beach and Petit Le Mans. The 2018 season was true to form, winning the Rolex 24 on the way to Prototype championships in the driver, team and manufacturer categories.
There is little doubt that Cadillac will step up its game even further with the team at Chip Ganassi Racing.
Some DPi teams were scrambling during the short gap between the Sebring finale in November and the Roar Before the 24 at Daytona on Jan. 22-24.
Things were a little different at Chip Ganassi Racing, which did not compete last season.
“The energy level is certainly high, there’s no question about that,” Hull said in late December. “We’re lucky we have a complete car to work on, which is in the process of going back together to be ready for a test in early January. That part is good. ECR (Earnhardt Childress Racing) with the engine program has been well into it. Dallara has been well into it with the chassis with our people already. So we’ve got great partners and great support there. So that helps, not to shortcut the process but to help the process along. A lot of candlepower going on here to be ready to race in January.”
Chip Ganassi Racing has not participated in IMSA’s top class since 2015, having fielded Ford GTs in the GTLM class from 2016-’19. As a result, there was some catching up to do.
“I think there always is moving from one category to another no matter what you might call it,” Hull noted. “There are similarities, but the similarities are based on the matchup at the time or the matchup today. We’ll work really, really hard to understand the level of competition and what it takes to be competitive in this current environment. Let’s face it, Cadillac has been in this series for a while and they’ll help us quite a bit. It’s just a matter of matching up the culture of Chip Ganassi Racing with Cadillac and Dallara.”
Ganassi’s drivers are new to the team. Magnussen moves from the Haas F1 Formula One operation to full-time sports car competition.
It is interesting to note that his career path is the same as his father, Jan. The elder Magnussen also came to IMSA from Formula One and then spent nearly 20 years racing in the American Le Mans Series, including a stint as a Corvette Racing driver in IMSA that ended in 2019.
The younger Magnussen likes his new prospects.
“Chip has built one of the best racing organizations on and off the track and you can look back in history and see the tremendous record of success, especially as it relates to sports car racing,” he said.
Van der Zande is an “old hand” at prototype racing, specifically in a Cadillac DPi. He already has two Rolex watches, winning them back-to-back in 2019 and ’20.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to have raced and won with Scott (Dixon) in sports cars and I think he really embodies what the whole Chip Ganassi Racing organization is all about,” Van der Zande said. “It’s a first-class operation and the team knows how to win the big races. One of the things that stood out to me was hearing that as a former driver, Chip always wanted to create and build a team that he would want to drive for.
“He has certainly done that and those results speak for themselves across many series around the world.”
According to Hull, there is more in store for CGR in the future.
“We’re looking forward to 2023 and LMDh like a lot of people and there have already been a lot of manufacturer announcements going toward 2023,” Hull said. “I don’t know how to marry up the glory days of sports car racing versus the future days of sports car racing, but I think it has a little bit of flavor of both.
“It’s going to represent a new era of hybrid development, which is something we want to part of as a team, and I hope we can be a part of that with Cadillac.” n