Rumor Mill in Hyperdrive After Ganassi Says It's Leaving Cadillac GTP Program

• The final minutes of the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring confirmed how much the Ganassi team brings to the IMSA WeatherTech Championship.

• Last week, it was confirmed by the Ganassi team that it would be leaving the Cadillac GTP program after 2024.

• If past is prologue, Ganassi may end up sitting out the 2025 season and return in 2026.

Sometimes the rumor mill in the paddock has as much speed as the race cars. Such was the case at Sebring (Fla.) International Raceway, where the speculation about Chip Ganassi Racing’s future in the hybrid GTP class of IMSA was top of the charts.

Ganassi will not race for Cadillac in 2025. Ganassi driver Sebastien Bourdais summed things up by saying he was “shocked” to learn the news, which broke on Monday of race week when the new direction was confirmed by the Ganassi team.

This leaves two doors open. Who will take up the slack at Cadillac, and where will the vaunted team of Ganassi end up next?

The final minutes on Saturday night of the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, a classic finish for America’s oldest endurance race, confirmed how much the Ganassi team brings to the WeatherTech Championship. Leader Bourdais dueled in the dark for the victory with Acura ARX-06 driver Louis Deletraz of WTR/Andretti. The fender-banging by Deletraz, which was at the very edge of discretion, gave him a chance to out-brake the Cadillac V-Series-R in the Hairpin and take the lead and victory with less than five minutes to go.

Given that CGR brought Cadillac a podium finish at Le Mans last year and was crucial to capturing the manufacturer’s championship in the season’s finale at the Petit Le Mans, it seems unlikely the parting of Ganassi and Cadillac resulted from the manufacturer’s lack of interest. Ganassi always has options in sports car racing and it’s difficult to imagine him leaving General Motors unless there’s a bigger budget elsewhere.

Perhaps there just was not enough budget at Cadillac, in the estimation of the Ganassi team, to continue an assault on an overall win at Le Mans. At present, it looks like a seismic shift has occurred in the direction of Porsche and Team Penske, which ran third at Sebring, when it comes to who has the biggest budget in American endurance racing.

If past is prologue, Ganassi may end up sitting out the 2025 season and return in 2026. After the team concluded its campaign with the Ford GT in 2019, it was not until 2021 that the relationship began with Cadillac in the DPi class.

Will Ganassi reverse gears and head back to Ford? The company is rumored to be interested in a prototype program.