Henri Dubois · Endurance-Korrespondent
After a neck injury and subsequent surgery, Alex Lynn must miss the WEC weekend at Fuji once again, leaving Cadillac Jota to field only Norman Nato and Will Stevens.
Alex Lynn will not be behind the wheel of the Cadillac V-Series.R with the number 12 at the FIA WEC's endurance race at Fuji Speedway. The British driver is sidelined by a neck injury that has persisted since the start of the year, costing him the majority of the current season. Unlike his previous absences, Cadillac Jota is forgoing a third driver as a replacement in Japan and instead relying on a two-driver lineup.
An Injury That Drags On
Lynn's struggles are not a sudden setback but an ongoing burden that has accumulated since the winter. Following neck surgery, he missed most of the WEC season to date, a situation that is nearly impossible to overcome in a discipline where a driver spends double stints of sometimes more than two hours straight in a tight cockpit. An unhealed neck injury cannot tolerate the stress of high lateral forces in fast corner combinations, the kind found at several venues on the WEC calendar.
Cadillac Jota has navigated this absence time with changing solutions so far, underscoring just how dependent a long-distance program is on a reliable driver roster when a regular driver misses multiple race weekends.
Nato and Stevens Alone in Fuji
For the race in Japan, the team will field Norman Nato and Will Stevens as the driver pairing, without a third replacement driver in the plans. This differs from the previous fill-in arrangements and likely has to do with the track's nature. Fuji is not one of the 24-hour marathons on the calendar, so the race distance allows both drivers to split their stints without a third man in a way that won't push individual drive times to unreasonable lengths.
For Nato and Stevens, it means more responsibility in the cockpit and in coordinating with the pit crew, especially at a weekend when Cadillac as a manufacturer is also fighting for points in the Hypercar class manufacturers' standings, now that the separate team championship in that class was abolished for the 2026 season.
From Le Mans to COTA: A String of Substitutions
The absence in Fuji is not the first this season. At Spa-Francorchamps and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Louis Delétraz stepped in for Lynn, while IMSA driver Ricky Taylor took over at the Circuit of The Americas. This succession of different stand-ins demonstrates how Cadillac Jota has had to draw on a broad network of available drivers throughout the season rather than establishing one fixed replacement solution.
The decision to forgo a third driver specifically in Fuji was likely also a matter of availability.
Return to Europe in Sight
For Lynn himself, a timeline for his comeback is taking shape. After completing his rehabilitation, he has been cleared to return at the two final European rounds of the season, the Six Hours of Barcelona and the Six Hours of Monza. Until then, it falls to Nato and Stevens to guide the Cadillac V-Series.R number 12 through the Fuji weekend, and to Cadillac Jota to maintain the consistency that a full season of long-distance racing demands, even when the regular lineup is repeatedly disrupted.
