Swiss · Born 1997 · #40 Cadillac V-Series.R · Wayne Taylor Racing
Louis Delétraz won the 2024 12 Hours of Sebring overall with Jordan Taylor and Colton Herta in the #40 Acura ARX-06. He returns in 2026 to the same car number, the same team, now in a Cadillac V-Series.R — and with the explicit ambition of winning consecutive Sebring titles. Back-to-back victories at one of endurance racing's greatest events would elevate his legacy to a new level, and the motivation driving every lap of his preparation is self-evident.
Louis Delétraz was born in 1997 in Geneva, Switzerland. His father Jean-Denis Delétraz was himself a professional racing driver — competing in Formula 1 in the mid-1990s and building a career that spanned various European formula and touring car categories. Growing up in a racing family, with the circuits and engineering culture of the sport embedded in everyday life, gave Louis a foundation that many aspiring racing drivers lack.
Switzerland sits at the center of European motorsport geography — close to the major circuits of France, Italy, Germany, and Belgium — and has a long tradition of producing precision engineering that extends naturally into motorsport. Delétraz embodies that tradition: meticulous preparation, technical intelligence, and the careful, calculated approach to performance that characterizes Swiss precision applied to racing.
Louis Delétraz competed in Formula 2 — the direct feeder series to Formula 1 — from 2018 to 2020. Formula 2 is genuinely the most competitive junior formula category in the world: it uses identical cars for every driver, eliminating equipment as a variable and making it a pure test of talent and racecraft. The field typically includes multiple drivers who will go on to Formula 1, factory GT programs, or championship victories in endurance racing.
Formula 2 experience instills specific habits that transfer well to endurance racing's GTP category. The series demands precise technical feedback for setup work, strong tire management over race distances, and the ability to overtake cleanly in closely-matched machinery. All of these skills are directly applicable to prototype racing, and Delétraz arrived in IMSA with a foundation that accelerated his development considerably.
The 2024 12 Hours of Sebring was a landmark race for Louis Delétraz. Paired with Jordan Taylor — one of IMSA's most experienced native drivers and son of Wayne Taylor — and Colton Herta — an IndyCar frontrunner with exceptional natural pace — in the #40 Acura ARX-06 for Wayne Taylor Racing, the trio navigated the full complexity of twelve hours at Sebring to win outright.
Sebring victories are not given. They are earned through a combination of car reliability, strategic execution, driving excellence, and the management of the many things that can go wrong over twelve hours: safety car periods, mechanical incidents, tire strategy decisions, and the physical and mental attrition of the race's distance. The #40's win in 2024 required all of these elements to align, and Delétraz's contribution across his stints was a central part of why they did.
Winning at Sebring in your mid-twenties, in the top GTP class, at one of the sport's most historic events, is a career-defining achievement. Delétraz knew it at the time, and the confidence that comes from that knowledge will be visible in every aspect of his 2026 approach.
Alongside his IMSA program, Delétraz competes in the FIA World Endurance Championship — giving him a dual-series schedule that places him on circuits across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia in addition to North America. WEC competition includes the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 6 Hours of Spa among other prestigious events, and the mix of different teams, different engineering cultures, and different circuit types makes WEC a valuable complement to IMSA racing.
Drivers who run both WEC and IMSA typically arrive at events with broader recent race experience than single-series competitors. Different circuits challenge different aspects of technique, and the variety keeps drivers sharp in ways that a single-championship program does not. Delétraz's WEC races give him race condition mileage between IMSA events that shows in his race pace when Sebring weekend arrives.
Wayne Taylor Racing is one of IMSA's most successful team operations. The Taylor family's commitment to excellence — built over decades of North American sportscar racing at the highest level — provides Delétraz with championship-caliber engineering, strategy, and operational execution. The #40 entry, running alongside the #10 car of Renger van der Zande, gives WTR two genuine GTP title contenders and the combined data and strategy knowledge that comes from running two experienced lineups simultaneously.
The transition from the Acura ARX-06 (which won in 2024) to the Cadillac V-Series.R for 2026 represents a platform change that the team has managed carefully. Delétraz's input in developing the setup specific to Sebring's demands has been central to that preparation — and his 2024 winning baseline gives him an invaluable reference point for what the #40 needs to go fast at this particular circuit.
Watch Delétraz in the moments where the race hangs in the balance. Drivers who have already won at a circuit carry a qualitative advantage in those situations — they know what winning feels like from the inside, and they know the specific decisions that produced victory before: the right moment to pass, the right level of risk to accept at a restart, the right approach to the final stint when tires are worn and the margin to a rival is measured in seconds.
The back-to-back narrative will follow the #40 throughout the race weekend. Every session, every stint, every lap will be interpreted through the lens of whether Delétraz can repeat. That is a good kind of pressure — the pressure of expectation built on proven achievement — and it is the best kind of story to follow across twelve hours of racing.
Consecutive outright victories at Sebring with the same core driver lineup are uncommon. The race's competitiveness — multiple factory GTP programs with full engineering resources, across five or more manufacturers — means that repeating victory requires not just maintained performance but improvement, as rivals analyze and respond to what won the previous year. The #40's 2024 victory is now the benchmark that everyone else is targeting, and Delétraz must go faster than what was already good enough to win.
Louis's father competed in Formula 1 in 1994 and 1995, making two Grand Prix starts for the Pacific team. Racing families in motorsport are common — the sport's technical culture and lifestyle exposure create conditions that foster talent in the next generation. What distinguishes Louis Delétraz is that his success has clearly been earned through talent and preparation, building on a foundation of early exposure rather than coasting on family connections.