Enlarge / Nine GTP race cars from Acura, Cadillac, BMW, and Porsche took part in this year's 24-hour race at Daytona. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

BMW provided flights from DC to Orlando and back, plus four nights in a hotel, so we could attend the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

DAYTONA BEACH, FLA.—With just one race on the books, it's probably too soon to declare this the dawn of a new golden era in racing, but that thought was on many minds at last weekend's spectator-packed Rolex 24 at Daytona. The grueling 24-hour race is the season-opening event for the WeatherTech Sportscar Championship, and 2023 saw the introduction of a new class of hybrid prototype race cars called GTP (for Grand Touring Prototype).

The crowds were heavier than ever, buoyed by the debut of the new machines, which put on a good show. And the complicated new energy-based pit stop formula didn't appear to present anyone any trouble.

The same can't be said for the race itself. Twenty-four-hour racing is hard —I speak from some experience—and making it to the end should be, and is, a challenge. A 24-hour race as the first race of the year for all-new cars is even more difficult, despite the thousands of miles each car covered in testing over the past few months. As such, some feared we might be in for a repeat of 2003; that year saw a new prototype class introduced, the best of which finished 24 laps behind the winning car, a racing version of a Porsche 911.

Enlarge / The #6 Porsche Penske 963 and the #10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-06 run on Daytona's banking during the 2023 Roar Before the 24. With so many miles of testing completed, the Porsches are probably the favorites, but 24 hours is a long time in racing, and a lot can happen. (credit: Jake Galstad/LAT Images)

BMW provided flights from DC to San Francisco and back, plus five nights in a hotel, so we could attend Monterey Car Week. While I was there, I spoke with people from Acura and Lamborghini. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

This past weekend saw the successful conclusion of the International Motor Sports Association's "Roar Before the 24," the series' preseason test ahead of this coming weekend's Rolex 24, a 24-hour race held each January at Daytona International Speedway in Florida. This year, the preseason test was more important than most, as there's a new kind of race car, called the GTP, competing in the Rolex 24 in 2023.

The new hybrid prototype category has attracted more manufacturer interest than we've seen in many years, with brands like Acura and Porsche building new cars to compete and others, like Lamborghini, waiting in the wings to join next year. But the biggest question is whether these new race cars will be able to make it to the end of the race. As in the larger automotive industry, supply shortages mean that spare parts are scarce, so the consequences of a crash are calamitous.

But what makes GTP—originally called LMDh—so attractive to car makers? I asked David Salters, head of Honda Performance Development, which oversees the Japanese OEM's racing activities in North America.

Enlarge (credit: Cadillac)

The world of Formula 1 got a shock on Thursday morning when General Motors announced it has plans to enter the championship. GM wants to go F1 racing with its Cadillac brand, partnering with a new Andretti Global team, assuming the sport's organizing body accepts the entry.

F1 has been fixed at 10 teams since Haas joined the sport in 2016. Since then, the series has introduced a new budget cap that has reined in some of the crazier budgets and made the prospect of operating an F1 team much less of a financial black hole. The exact amount of the cost cap is adjusted depending on how many races are planned for a year— for 2023, that should be $138.6 million —and even finishing in 10th place earns a team enough money to cover about 70 percent of those costs.

As a result, the sport is now a much more attractive proposition for new entrants than it was the last time we gained new teams in 2010, none of which survived. But there's a snag: You can't just turn up at the start of a season with a couple of cars and expect to go racing. The sport's organizing body, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), requires that any new team "buy in" to the franchise with a $200 million "non-dilution fee" meant to ensure a new competitor doesn't cost the existing 10 teams any of their income.

Enlarge / The Cadillac Lyriq is the first expression of the classic American luxury brand's future as an electric automaker. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Cadillac provided flights from DC to Salt Lake City and back, plus a night in a hotel so we could drive the Lyriq. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

PARK CITY, UTAH—They say—accurately, in my opinion—that nothing focuses the mind like a deadline. I'm not sure what the amplification factor is when that deadline suddenly shrinks by nine months, as was the case for Cadillac's new Lyriq, but the result is an extremely competent new battery-electric SUV.

As we've covered in the past , General Motors is at the start of an electrification plan that it hopes will mean no more tailpipe emissions from any of the group's vehicles by 2035. The key to that is a family of batteries and electric motors (named Ultium) to be used across everything from big body-on-frame trucks to small crossovers . We've actually sampled a couple of early Ultium-based BEVs already—the bombastic Hummer EV truck and BrightDrop Zevo 600 delivery van . Both of those are rather niche applications, but the Lyriq is much more mainstream, given America's love for the SUV.

At launch, the Lyriq is available in a single-motor, rear-wheel-drive configuration, with a twin-motor, all-wheel-drive version coming early in 2023. The RWD Lyriq uses a 340 hp (255 kW), 325 lb-ft (440 Nm) version of the Ultium Drive motor, which is powered by a 102 kWh lithium-ion battery pack.

Enlarge / The taillight of the Celestiq show car is one of the few images Cadillac has released of its next flagship. (credit: Cadillac)

Cadillac's transformation into an all-electric vehicle brand is about to get underway. The first new Cadillac EV will be the Lyriq , which has just entered production; Ars is driving it next week, and we'll be able to tell you about it on June 28.

With a starting price of $59,990, the Lyriq looks reasonably priced to enter the competitive luxury EV SUV space. But the Cadillac EV that follows will be a much more exclusive machine. It's called the Celestiq, and so far, details are scarce ahead of a formal reveal of the show car in late July. Cadillac has said that "from first approach, the striking silhouette of the Celestiq show car leaves a lasting impression, challenging the ultra-luxury space with the spirit of futurism and the avant-garde."

On Wednesday afternoon, Cadillac revealed that it will hand-build the Celestiq and will spend $81 million to set up production at General Motors' Global Technical Center in Warren, Michigan.