Cadillac has called Louis Delétraz into the cockpit of the No. 12 Hertz Team Jota Cadillac V-Series.R for the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps after Alex Lynn was ruled out of round two of the FIA World Endurance Championship while continuing treatment for a neck injury.
Lynn missed the season-opener at Imola last month and has now been forced to sit out the high-speed Belgian round as well, with Cadillac's medical team and the British driver opting for a precautionary continuation of his rehab rather than a return at one of the most physically demanding circuits on the calendar.
The decision has triggered a notable strategic shift inside the Cadillac garage. The No. 12 ran with a two-driver crew of Will Stevens and Norman Nato at Imola, but for Spa the team has switched to a full three-driver effort — opening the door for Delétraz to make what will be his first WEC start outside of the Le Mans 24 Hours. The Swiss driver, a Le Mans veteran for Jota in past seasons, brings strong sportscar credentials and a long-standing relationship with the Cadillac engineering structure that should ease his transition into a Hypercar weekend with no in-season prior testing.
Cadillac's wider Spa weekend was already shaping up as a steep climb. Hertz Team Jota team-mate Sébastien Bourdais has made it clear that the team has plenty of work to do with the new Hypercar package and the Michelin tyre allocation, particularly in cooler conditions. Bourdais's assessment in Imola pointed to a car that operates best at higher tarmac temperatures, and with Spa forecasts hovering at 19–20°C and a chance of rain, that picture does not flatter Cadillac's title hopes for the weekend.
The Cadillac story is only one chapter of an increasingly competitive Hypercar pecking order. Toyota Gazoo Racing arrived in Belgium having converted strategy into victory at Imola, but pre-event mood music has been less bullish than the result might suggest. The Japanese manufacturer has not won at Spa since 2023 and missed the podium in both 2024 and 2025. Toyota's senior brain trust, including team principal and driver Kamui Kobayashi, has publicly noted that the GR010 Hybrid still requires more development across the board if it is to genuinely fight Ferrari for the championship in 2026.
The numbers behind that caution sit in the Imola speed-trap data. The fastest Toyota — the No. 8 — was only 12th through the trap, with a top speed of 313.1 km/h that left it 4.7 km/h adrift of the quickest Ferrari 499P. At Spa, where a long Kemmel straight is the defining feature of every Hypercar lap, that kind of deficit is the difference between a podium and a midfield Friday.
Ferrari, by contrast, arrives looking very much like the team to beat — but Spa has a habit of throwing curveballs. Hertz Team Jota's Porsche 963 won the Belgian round in 2024 to become the first privateer Hypercar winner in WEC history, and Alpine's A424 was within a handful of seconds of last year's race-winning Ferrari at Imola. As the data settles, BMW M Team WRT's M Hybrid V8 looks the genuine dark horse of the weekend. The Munich squad sits among the fastest cars in the speed-trap data, has Dries Vanthoor and Sheldon van der Linde back from clashing GT commitments to bolster its line-up, and is poised to capitalise if anyone slips up.
Genesis Magma Racing's Porsche-derived G80 GMR.1 will be facing its most demanding engine test to date at Spa, where the Kemmel and Pouhon sections give nowhere to hide. The all-new V8-twin-turbo project ran two cars to the finish at Imola and will measure success this weekend by the same yardstick — getting both entries to the chequered flag, banking real-world data, and arriving at Le Mans in June with confidence intact.
Free practice gets underway on Thursday at Spa-Francorchamps, with the 6 Hours of Spa start scheduled for 1pm local on Saturday. For Cadillac, the priority for the weekend is suddenly far more modest than a podium charge: get Delétraz integrated, give Lynn the space to recover fully, and build a setup base that travels to Le Mans next month.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/cadillac-deletraz-spa-2026-wec-alex-lynn-injury). Visit for full coverage.*