When Bourdais won the ILMC race at Imola with Peugeot

The second round of the 2024 WEC season takes place this weekend at Imola, a track that the World Endurance Championship has never visited since its rebirth in 2012. Its predecessor, the World Sportscar Championship, made its last stop here on 16 September 1984, 40 years ago. Victory went to the Brun Motorsport Porsche 956 of Hans Joachim Stuck and the late Stefan Bellof, who took the crown two and a half months later.

More recently, however, the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari has been the venue for another renowned endurance championship: the ILMC, or Intercontinental Le Mans Cup, which will give rise to the WEC in 2012. That was in 2011, and the ACO took advantage of its trip to Emilia-Romagna to reveal the identity of the first director of its new FIA World Endurance Championship: Gérard Neveu, who had shortly before left the management of the Circuit Paul-Ricard.

Peugeot, which is preparing to launch its 9X8 2024 into competition, has fond memories of this meeting. Just three weeks after losing out to Audi by a margin of 13.854 seconds in the Le Mans 24 Hours, the lion-faced firm scored a second victory with its 908.

Bourdais, who joined Earl Bamber and Alex Lynn to drive the No. 2 Cadillac V-Series.R for the opening race in Qatar, won the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup – precursor of the WEC – race on July 3, 2011.

The Frenchman co-drove the No. 7 Peugeot 908 entry with Anthony Davidson to victory by more than a minute over the No. 8 sister car in the six-hour race. Davidson earned the pole and Bourdais set the LMP1 race lap record of 1 minute, 33.112 seconds.

“It was a great weekend and a great year,” said Bourdais, who will take a runner-up finish in the March 16 IMSA Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Presented by Cadillac into the April 20 IMSA race at Long Beach (Calif.) with Renger van der Zande in the No. 01 Cadillac V-Series.R. “The Peugeot was strong from the first free practice and Anthony gave us a good start to the race. The car was perfect and the team strategy was flawless."

“Imola is a super busy track; very restless, challenging, a lot of curb striking, very difficult to manage traffic because it’s constantly moving across the racetrack. And the chicanes, in general, are difficult to manage traffic. Super demanding on brakes and they’ll be talking about it quite a bit during the race. I know it bit Audi quite badly and we were really on the edge with the Peugeot back then.

“It will be a challenging weekend between the car count and the track characteristics, but a fun place especially in qualifying when you have to go for it. It’s a very rewarding track when you manage to get everything together.”

Certainly as much as within the walls of Long Beach, where Sébastien Bourdais has shone on many occasions during his career and where, this Saturday, he will be attempting to score his first success in 2024. But perhaps before heading off to California, he will offer some sound advice to Earl Bamber and Alex Lynn, with whom he shared the wheel of the #2 Cadillac V-Series.R in Qatar. This time, however, the aim will be to topple Peugeot!