"Feels great" to be on pole in São Paulo: Cadillac's No.12 reacts to back-to-back poles

Written by Ghazlan Atqiya Firmansyah

The No.12 drivers celebrating their second pole position | Credit: Cadillac Racing

Cadillac JOTA's No.12 took back-to-back pole positions and will start the 6 Hours of São Paulo with a clear track ahead of them. They were originally accompanied by their No.38 sister car in second before being handed a one-place grid penalty for impeding a Peugeot.

Similar to Le Mans, Alex Lynn drove the V-Series.R to pole position, achieving his third career pole position in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). The No.12 car maintained its solid record of being the only Hypercar to qualify in the top 10 in every five races this season.

It has been six months since Cadillac and JOTA's V-Series.R program commenced, and they have shown great improvement from each round. Cadillac and JOTA have doubled down on their preparations for São Paulo by focusing on tyre management and focusing on the car's efficiency.

Norman Nato said: "After a quite good effort in Le Mans, another challenge for us in Brazil [is] with different track conditions. A lot of tyre degradation at the rear, which makes the tyre strategy and driving different than the other races in terms of management."

"We will focus on being efficient in the race, where we need to find the best car setup compromise to be smooth on tyres."

The No.12 Cadillac V-Series.R on the Interlagos Circuit | Credit: Cadillac Racing

The mood in the No.12's garage has been positive and confident this weekend, and it translated well into the qualifying session.

"It feels great to be on pole again", Lynn began. "It's a special feeling to drive the Cadillac on one lap. I love being here in Brazil. The Sāo Paulo track is so cool. It's [a] huge a huge honour, and I'm really happy."

"I think, honestly, our side of the garage has been really confident all week. So, we concentrate on the race now. We knew we were going to be quick, and we were. So now we just focus. It's a good place to start, and we just want to race well now."

"We knew we needed to start at the front for this race. Track position is pretty key here, so this is the place to be starting from tomorrow", Will Stevens said.

Nato praised Lynn's efforts and looks forward to the challenging race where tyre degradations would be a problem: "Big congrats to Alex and the team for another 1–2. We know it's going to be a difficult race tomorrow with a lot of different strategies on tyres and a lot of degradation."

"It's good to start from pole tomorrow, and we are going to try our best to be on [the] first step of the podium tomorrow."