IMSA – Alexander Sims (Cadillac) : "We’re embarking on an unknown journey at each of these circuits that we go to"

Tell us about what you're looking forward to most getting back to Laguna Seca...

I’m looking forward to getting back to Laguna. It has a pretty unique track surface there, thankfully still, I believe. There is a lovely mix of corners in a nice part of the world. Looking forward to just driving the track and trying to get our teeth stuck into understanding how these GTP cars can work best around there.

I think it’s new for all of us with these cars. We’re embarking on an unknown journey at each of these circuits that we go to. We sort of do the simulator work, and the engineers have a certain expectation of what it should be in terms of competitiveness for us.

Once we’re on the ground, the circuit conditions are inevitably slightly different to what one expects. We have to adapt and try to optimize our package as quickly as possible while still working on the fundamental development of this car as well because we are still in the early stages of development.

You made reference to the unique surface and that it’s still the same when you’re there in two weeks. Is there a comfort going there with a new car but a surface you’re familiar with?

I don’t know. I just like the track surface as it is because it's a different type of surface compared to many that we would race on. I enjoy going places and having different challenges to work through. Certainly tire degradation will be a bit of a pain for us, and maybe I’ll be kicking myself for saying that I was looking forward to it before the weekend if we do struggle with tire deg or something through the race.

Who knows? It's a challenge that I enjoy. These cars are so different, honestly, particularly compared to stuff I’ve worked with before and even the team with the DPi last year with a different Michelin tire, there’s not a huge amount that is the same and can be transferred from that learning in terms of specific engineering items. The fact that the track surface is the same… it is a bit of a known quantity that we are likely to have tire deg going into it.

But beyond that, there is not a huge amount of learning into it. It at least doesn’t throw another variable into the mix. I’ve had in the past some new track surfaces that you go to and it treats the tire completely different to what you were expecting. Sometimes you have to really change cambers and things a lot to try and manage tire temperatures that you weren’t expecting. It’s a nice variable to have through the season – to go to some high-deg tracks and low-deg tracks and have a different challenge.

What is the most important corner to get right at Laguna to either extract lap time or making a move on another driver?

It’s very difficult to pick just one that is the most important. I don’t know how you say one over any other. They’re all tough at Laguna, to be honest. They all have different characteristics … some off-camber and some on-camber, and slow-, medium- and even Turn Nine that is pretty high-speed.

Does having Cadillacs in both IMSA and WEC has sped up the development process?

From Cadillac’s side, it certainly has been helpful to have the WEC guys running. There have been a few occasions where we’ve had feedback from our race weekend and they’ve then had a race in between. Even Sebring when they had the Prologue, there were learnings that we were able to feed into their program and they were able to feed into ours. At the end, it’s small, incremental improvements.

It’s not like they come up with some brand new suspension geometry that is going to add tenths of a second to your laptime or take it away, even. But there are small improvements to software items, usability of that from a driver’s perspective on track… we can get up to speed with some things a little quicker, but it’s a constant learning process that we’re going through. All the extra track time that you have is always extra learning, so it’s definitely a benefit, I would say.