Filipe Albuquerque (Cadillac): "The Acura is the car to beat in pure speed"

While Cadillac has been behind since the start of the Roar, Filipe Albuquerque gives his impressions to AUTOhebdo after Free Practice 1 of the 24 Hours of Daytona.

Published 23/01/2025 à 20:17

Valentin GLO

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Filipe Albuquerque (Cadillac): "The Acura is the car to beat in pure speed"

The #10 Cadillac V-Series.R driven by Filipe Albuquerque at Daytona - © 2025 Jake Galstad

Filipe, how do you feel about the Cadillac so far?

We're doing some tuning, especially because Cadillac used a joker, there's definitely some other things they can do as well. The car feels pretty good, especially now. At the Roar, we weren't competitive at all. We've recovered a little bit with the Balance of Performance adjustment. We look more competitive, but I don't think based on Free Practice 1 we're there yet.

Right here last year the problem with the Cadillac was the top speed, do you think that is still the case this year?

It is important to say that this year we have for the first time a BoP above 240 km/h, and they are playing with that. At the Roar, what we could see compared to the other cars is that they gave us a lot of power below 230 and a lot of power after 240, so we tried to match that. We felt that the momentum they gave us on the exit of the corner was way too much to compensate for the top speed in terms of drag coefficient. Now we are a little bit better for sure, but we have to see in the race. What they are trying to do is to make it fair and balanced that four manufacturers are competing throughout the race, which is never easy.

Acura and BMW have looked very strong since the start of the Roar, do you think these two manufacturers are the favorites this weekend?

It's hard to say. Of course the world is keeping its hand in the bag, but it seems like the Acura is the car to beat right now in pure speed, and we know that reliability-wise it's pretty good. The car is down 28 pounds from last year, going from 1070 to 1042. BMW have been very competitive as well.

For Cadillac, will it be necessary to have the perfect race this weekend?

No, I don't want to seem unfair by pointing too much at the performance because we don't know yet. We have to wait and see. So far, in terms of testing, we don't seem to have a good performance compared to the others. That's factual. You just have to extract all the results from the sessions to see the lap times. We'll see what happens in the race.

ALSO READ > 24H of Daytona – EL1: Acura double before qualifying

Valentin GLO

Journalist. Endurance reporter (WEC, IMSA, ELMS, ALMS) and sometimes F1 or IndyCar.

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