Hignett: JOTA “Looking Forward” After Qatar Disaster

Photo: Julien Delfosse/DPPI

Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA is “looking forward” after its highly publicized collision between its two Cadillac V-Series.Rs in February’s FIA World Endurance Championship season-opening Qatar 1812km according to team co-owner Sam Hignett.

The British squad’s chances of victory in Qatar were eliminated in the third hour when Alex Lynn’s No. 12 entry ran into the back of the sister No. 38 Cadillac of Jenson Button while running 1-2 in the race on a restart.

Both cars continued in the race but were heavily delayed, finishing eighth and 16th.

Speaking with Sportscar365 at Imola, the site of this weekend”s second round of the season, Hignett said “various things” with team communication has been “reiterated” since the costly Qatar incident.

“We’ve reiterated some processes and procedures,” Hignett said. “What we’re doing is looking forward.

“We don’t want to look back on what happened. There are lessons that have been learned and actions that have been taken.

“But now we’re looking forward to the future. Let’s see what happens.

“That was a pretty unique situation. Let’s see where we end up now.”

When asked on the exact extent of procedural changes or clarifications, Hignett said: “There’s various things with how the team works and the communication of the drivers that we’ve done. Various bits and pieces.

“You learn a lot more in failure than you do in success. We failed pretty badly and we learned an awful lot. Let’s put it that way.”

Hignett said he was pleased with the pace of the two factory Cadillacs in Friday’s Free Practice 1, which saw Lynn and Button set the third and fifth quickest times, respectively, sandwiched between the three Ferrari 499Ps.

“I think there’s still work to do,” he said. “Most teams have tested here. Certainly we maybe had a bit of a better balance at the test than we did in FP1.

“So there’s some work to do to get back to that car.

“We’re in the mix. There’s some cars that are out on their own. I don’t think anybody’s going to be catching them in the near future, but we’re certainly in the mix.”

Hignett also highlighted the gains with Cadillac heading into the second race of their new factory partnership.

“Every weekend, every week we’re so closely integrated with Cadillac that we learn more and we achieve more,” he said.

“You’ll just see a continuous improvement as that relationship builds. That drives performance. You’ll see that over the course of the year.”

When asked to compare the Cadillac to the Porsche 963 that the British squad operated as a privateer last year, Hignett would not be drawn to any direct comparisons, but highlighted the direct line of development they now have with GM.

“I don’t think we could say one is better than the other because they’re actually very different,” he said.

“They’re actually very different cars. There’s advantages of the Cadillac for sure.

“What we have that we didn’t have with the Porsche is that direct line into Cadillac to develop the car from a software point of view and do all of that.

“Whereas that’s what Penske does with Porsche and we were the normally very happy recipient of the result.

“Now we’re able to drive that development.”