Cadillac lost pole position for this weekend’s Le Mans 24 Hours because Jack Aitken was sent to the pitlane exit ahead of time at the start of final qualifying.
The #38 Jota Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh was released from its pit stall four minutes before the Hyperpole 2 session was due to begin, but the race director had instructed teams that cars could only enter the fast lane in the pits three minutes before the start time of final qualifying.
The stewards’ bulletin that confirmed the penalty stated: “The driver failed to follow the race director's instructions by leaving the working lane to join the fast lane before being authorised to do so.”
The penalty imposed for the offence was the deletion of Aitken’s fastest lap time.
That promoted the #15 WRT BMW M Hybrid LMDh driven by Dries Vanthoor, who had lapped just five thousandths slower than the Cadillac, to pole position and demoted Aitken to 10th and last position in H2.
Jota team principal Dieter Gass confirmed that Aitken had been sent to the end of the pitlane four minutes before the session was due to begin whereas the instruction from race control was to wait until three minutes to go.
But he revealed that the software linked to race control’s official timing used by the team was showing that the countdown had reached three minutes when Aitken was released.
“The software we and the rest of the paddock uses was clearly wrong,” Gass told Motorsport. “It is linked to race control’s timing, so how it could be wrong, we don’t know. In theory what we did was correct because it was showing three minutes.”
Gass stressed that Aitken gained “zero advantage” from being at the head of the queue when H2 qualifying started because he pitted at the end of his out-lap to change tyres.
“We gained nothing, so that makes it all the more difficult to accept,” he said.
Jota and Cadillac, which claimed pole for Le Mans last year with Alex Lynn, still have a car on the front row for this weekend’s 94th running of the French enduro.
Will Stevens was initially classified third with a time half a second shy of his team-mate before being promoted to second.
