BMW M Team RLL – Syndication Server

BMW Team RLL leads ‘deceptively quick’ final day of IMSA test at IMS

Heading into IMSA’s two-day sanctioned test at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in preparation for the upcoming TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks, discussion centered on whether the hot July test conditions would correlate to the mid-September race …

Turns out that while the historical average high temperature for Sept. 17 is just under 78 degrees, Saturday’s high of 86 degrees at IMS precisely matches the average high temp from the last six years on what will be race day. The broiling conditions (Friday’s high of 91 degrees felt like triple digits with the humidity) endured this week by the 33 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge teams that participated in the test could end up being surprisingly relevant.

The summer heat was certainly a treat for Indianapolis-based BMW M Team RLL, which saw its cars atop the timing screen at the end of Saturday’s action. Connor De Phillippi ran a series of laps in the 1m14s bracket in the No. 25 BMW M Hybrid V8, culminating in a 1m14.655s lap (117.612mph) in the final half hour of the afternoon session.

Jesse Krohn, who co-drives the No. 24 BMW in IMSA’s Michelin Endurance Cup rounds, was second fastest at 1m14.758s (117.450mph) around the 14-turn, 2.439-mile IMS road course.

“It was a productive two days and I’m really proud of the team,” said De Phillippi, who, with co-driver Nick Yelloly, ranks second in the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) season point standings, just 10 points behind the lead No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac Racing Cadillac V-Series.R duo of Alexander Sims and Pipo Derani.

“We’re trying to learn something every run, trying a lot of different software stuff and trying to improve areas of the car that I believe we can get more consistent lap times out of if we get better,” De Phillippi added. “The entire field is super tight and you’re fighting for half a tenth here, half a tenth there.”

With an eye toward the fact that the season-ending Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta is likely to be critical to deciding the championship, BMW M Team RLL was pleased to have the opportunity to get endurance drivers Krohn and Colton Herta seat time in the Nos. 24 and 25 BMWs.

“We have a bit of long run pace to find,” De Phillippi noted. “We need to try to understand that and make the car more drivable over the full stint. Now we have a direction and we can push down that path. That’s been a positive from the two days.

“Just nice to be in the mix and be competitive. Hopefully, it stays the same when we come back here in September.”

The unexpectedly quick lap times in the summer heat surprised and delighted Cadillac Racing’s Sebastien Bourdais.

The co-driver of the No. 01 Cadillac V-Series.R along with Renger van der Zande turned the fastest lap in the first of Saturday’s sessions at 1m15.025s (117.032mph). Bourdais was then third on the afternoon speed charts, improving to 1m14.809s (117.370mph).

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With the GTP field closely bunched (the top five lapped within 0.181s in the morning and 0.360s in the afternoon), Bourdais was impressed that the Michelin tires kept producing quicker lap times the harder he pushed – all while showing minimal degradation.

“You think the tires have come in, and you keep going and there’s still more and more grip,” he said. “It’s very tight, and it seems like everybody is kind of driving to the potential of the tire.

“Everybody is pushing like crazy,” Bourdais added. “To get those lap times, you have to push really hard. The time doesn’t come easy; you have to really dig and use the brakes super hard. But the more you push the tires, the more it gives you. I don’t think anybody is taking it easy!”

Bourdais predicted qualifying for the race could be “deceptively quick.”

“It’s the first time we’ve had this much grip in these cars,” he said. “You have to hustle it. I don’t know what it looks like on the outside, but it’s pretty fun from the inside.”

Mikkel Jensen (No. 11 TDS Racing ORECA LMP2 07) was quickest in the Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) class at 1m16.532s; Wayne Boyd (No. 17 AWA Duqueine D08, 1m20.624s) led in Le Mans Prototype 3 (LMP3). Misha Goikhberg (No. 78 Forte Racing Powered by USRT Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2) topped the seven GT class entries participating in the test at 1m24.192s.

Among the 11 Michelin Pilot Challenge contenders testing at IMS, Eric Filgueiras paced the Grand Sport (GS) class in the No. 28 RS1 Porsche 718 GT4 RS Clubsport with a lap of 1m30.680s (96.828mph) in the third of four test periods, while Harry Gottsacker (No. 33 Bryan Herta Autosport with Curb Agajanian Hyundai Elantra N TCR) was fastest in Touring Car (TCR) at 1m32.388s (95.038mph) in the final session.

IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship and Michelin Pilot Challenge competitors have little time to regroup before heading to Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, site of the IMSA SportsCar Weekend, August 3-6. The IMSA SportsCar Weekend race for the WeatherTech Championship and Road America 120 for the Michelin Pilot Challenge both take place Sunday, Aug. 6.

SESSION THREE RESULTS

SESSION FOUR RESULTS

UPDATE: RLL BMW wins Watkins Glen Six Hour after Porsche penalized post-race

The No. 25 BMW M Team RLL BMW M Hybrid V8 won the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen on Sunday after the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 was assessed a penalty in post-race technical inspection. Driving the No. 6 Porsche, Mathieu Jaminet …

Driving the No. 6 Porsche, Mathieu Jaminet made a daring pass of Connor De Phillippi in the No. 25 BMW for the lead while both cars battled through lapped traffic with just five minutes remaining in the historic six-hour IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race at Watkins Glen International. That’s the way the cars finished as a full-course caution came out a lap later and the race finished under yellow.

However, in post-race inspection, the No. 6 Porsche was found with a skid block measuring less than the permitted minimum thickness and was moved to the rear of the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) finishing order, elevating the No. 25 BMW to victory.

It is the first win for the German manufacturer in the modern GTP era, meaning all four marques participating in the hybrid-electrified class in this debut season have now won in the first five races. The victory is the sixth of De Phillippi’s WeatherTech Championship career. Co-driver Nick Yelloly picked up his maiden series win.

Finishing second in the revised podium are the No. 31 Whelen Engineering Cadillac Racing Cadillac V-Series.R in second place with drivers Pipo Derani, Alexander Sims and Jack Aitken. Filling out the revised podium were Tom Blomqvist, Colin Braun and the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian Acura ARX-06 in third place.

Nine GTP cars were among the record-tying field of 57 entries for the race, the fifth of the 2023 WeatherTech Championship season, but several GTPs encountered issues during the race.

The No. 24 BMW crashed into the Turn 1 barrier on the opening lap and was eliminated. The No. 01 Cadillac Racing Cadillac sustained damage an hour into the race after spinning while trying to avoid a slower GT Daytona (GTD) car. The No. 7 Porsche 963 led 35 laps early before heading to the garage for repairs to its hybrid power system. And the No. 10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-06 fell from contention when it lost a wheel assembly on track and had to slowly make its way to pit lane for a replacement.

The next round of the WeatherTech Championship is the Chevrolet Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, July 14-16.

REVISED RESULTS

How BMW M Team RLL is squashing the GTP learning curve

In order to even make the grid for the Rolex 24 at Daytona, BMW’s learning curve had to be steep. Making a late start with its LMDh project – what would become known as the BMW M Hybrid V8 – it was far behind Acura, Cadillac and Porsche in preparing …

But BMW showed up. BMW M Team RLL and the BMW engineers persevered through a difficult Daytona race during which it spent a lot of time in the garages. But the team had finally done a 24-hour test, even it was in the first race of the season, and that made a huge difference.

“The testing leading up to Daytona was focused on reliability, explains Brandon Fry, BMW M Team RLL’s vice president of Sportscar Operations and technical director.

“Having said that, we had setbacks. We hadn’t done a 24-hour test leading into Daytona, so our performance focus only only started at Daytona. We went away from the Daytona event having finally run a car for, effectively, 24 hours. And we learned a lot from that. Now let’s go to the Sebring tests; we’ve got a lot of things to work on there. And I think we learned a lot. We tested in a lot of different areas at the Sebring test, and then we’re able to kind of go back and put these things together.”

The difference was substantial. Not only was a car running reliably for 12 hours, it was on the lead lap at the end. While not up front, the No. 25 was hanging on. When the top three came together with half an hour left, the No. 25 was there to land on the podium. From being 15 laps down with the 24 and 131 laps with the 25 – albeit, both running at the finish – at Daytona, to second at Sebring, on the lead lap, was huge.

“We went back to the Sebring race with two different setups on the car, and kind of learned in different directions through the Thursday practice day,” Fry says.

“We raced both cars the same, and I think we made some gains there. Then coming out of that race, still, we learned a lot about the car. With some [Driver-In-the-Loop simulator] work that we did between Sebring and Long Beach, we improved again. So that’s good for everybody.”

At Long Beach, Connor de Phillippi was quick to praise Nick Yelloly’s sim work for getting them to a second-place finish. True, the No. 25 got there with some help from a bad pit stop for Wayne Taylor Racing’s Acura ARX-06 that was followed by an ambitious move for the lead by Ricky Taylor that put the car into the tires at Turn 1. But if Taylor had sailed harmlessly into the runoff and hadn’t brought out a full-course caution, BMW might have even had a win, going against a fading Penske Porsche Motorsport 963 that had done the entire race on a single set of tires.

“Over the last six weeks we’ve got things lining up way, way better than beforehand, which is fantastic,” said Yelloly after the Long Beach podium.

“It doesn’t only help setting up the car better in terms of mechanical – because it’s software and hardware, integration is so tricky to get exactly right. Being able to run that on a car in the simulator is massive. And then we can also get guys back at base while we’re here. You know, they can work their asses off while we’re working our off here, so you can improve over a race weekend, more like a Formula 1 team. This is the kind of operation we’re having to run now. It’s cool that it’s starting to pay off.”

De Phillippi and Yelloly got to taste the champagne after a podium finish at Long Beach, and while this weekend’s trip to Laguna Seca isn’t expected to play to the BMW’s strengths, the team is bullish about its chances of a win this year. Jake Galstad/Motorsport Images

LMDh cars in the GTP category are homologated, meaning hardware changes outside a set of approved specs can’t happen. But software is open, and that’s an area where big changes can happen over a weekend as Yelloly notes. Fry explains that the software updates come rather frequently, sometimes requiring updates in between practice sessions.

“There are big gains between every event and I suspect we’re not alone in that; I think everybody is learning about this category in updating the software,” he says.

“When we went to Long Beach, Free Practice 1, we ran into some small issues with the software, so engineers in Germany and BMW Motorsport came up with several fixes and sent them to us, and we installed those for Free Practice 2, and it was a big help. It was a hindrance at first, and then a big help once they fixed the problem.”

Critics are quick to mention Balance of Performance whenever a particular car makes great strides, but Fry says that it hasn’t made a big difference. The BoP for the upcoming race at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, while not dead-even like it was at Daytona, is pretty close. And while some cars have more weight or power, the actual ratios are pretty close, as is the maximum stint energy.

“In the past, the BoP adjustments have been reactive to displayed car performance,” Fry says.

“What they’ve done so far with these cars is, they’ve tried to make adjustments based on simulation in the fundamental design of the cars. That’s what they did for Sebring. Then while there was an adjustment from Sebring to Long Beach, what effectively they tried to do was adjust the entire field within the same window, so they weren’t trying to improve one of the manufacturers relative to another. And in our simulation we tried to analyze the changes, and we came to the same conclusion that they’ve just shifted the whole field.

“I think that’s great. I think it’s important for IMSA to allow the teams and manufacturers to sort of learn about their cars and and see where the real performance is, before they start becoming reactionary based on results.”

While Fry doesn’t expect Laguna Seca to play to the car’s strengths, he is fairly confident that the BMW M Hybrid V8 will achieve a victory during the season.

“I think there are opportunities at every event we come to,” he says. “I see no reason why we don’t have an opportunity to win a race. And that’s certainly our goal. While I won’t say that I’m expecting that we have the same level of performance going into Laguna Seca that we had at Long Beach. I do expect that we’re competitive for all the rest of the races.”

INSIGHT: BMW, Porsche chart GTP progress at Sebring

The dramatic ending of the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring notwithstanding, it was clear that both Porsche and BMW had made great strides in their GTP programs since Daytona. Porsche Penske Motorsports was in position to have two cars on the podium, and possibly win, before the nasty crash in the chaos of Sebring traffic that took out both PPM Porsche 963s as well as the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport Acura ARX-06, giving the No. 31 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R prepared by Action Express Racing a clear path to victory.

So while in two races so far, it’s been the manufacturers that have the most recent IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship experience — Cadillac and Acura — that have taken victories, Porsche and BMW are catching up quickly.

“I didn’t expect to be in such a position at the end of the race, when we look at our race today,” said Jaminet, who was leading in the No. 6 Porsche when the lead pack of GTPs came upon a pack of GT traffic that led to the pileup. “We had so much setback and bad luck with our 6 crew and even the 7, we lacked some pace in the day when it’s hot. But to be there at the end, and the car works…. Thanks to the boys, too, for the work because we went completely different on setup, and we were targeting to be fast in the night. This is exactly what happened. And then in the end, they gave me the tools. We had a good last stop and everything was perfect.”

The fruits of testing showed in the performance of the Porsche Penske Motorsports Porsche 963s, even if their final results were disappointing. Jake Galstad/Motorsport Images

Porsche had done a lot of testing, including a 36-hour test at Sebring. But testing isn’t racing, and all the teams came away from the Rolex 24 At Daytona armed with a lot of valuable data. That data was applied to further testing at Sebring.

“We looked at Daytona, what happened,” said Matt Campbell, driver of the No. 7 963 with Felipe Nasr and Michael Christensen. “And we actually were able to run those same paths during the testing here in February. So these things we are able to learn and acknowledge and fix for this race. So I think this was probably one of the key aspects going into this this weekend, especially after our 36-hour endurance test.”

Porsche and Penske also had the benefit of running the WEC 1000 Miles of Sebring the day before, further adding to the information stores.

“We regroup, we believe in our work,” said Jaminet, mutedly celebrating a third-place finish with Dane Cameron and Nick Tandy. “We make steps all the time, on systems, on setups — it’s still a new car, so we are still discovering quite a lot of things as we go. We got the data, for example, of the WEC race. So it allowed us to react for today on the setup and I think in the end, we made the right call. We just need to keep to keep the same way of working, believe in ourselves believe in the team believe in the process.”

Thomas Laudenbach, head of Porsche motorsports, says there isn’t one thing he can credit for the strides Porsche Penske Motorsports made, except to say it was a lot of hard work. And while he won’t really celebrate until there’s a Porsche victory, he’s happy with the progress so far.

“For sure we made improvements to Daytona,” Laudenbach declared. “Obviously, we did work in the meantime. I still would say there is a long way to go. Positive side, clearly, we didn’t have any reliability issues, which was good. If you have one or two races without such a problem, it’s probably too early to say everything is solved. But that’s that’s definitely a positive sign and a positive direction.

“Looking at the qualifying, looking at the lap time, we still have to improve our performance. The good thing is here in IMSA you can fight for the victory. The format brings you back, even if you make mistakes, and I think it was all in all — probably not talking about the accident at the end, with the bad end on our side — it was great motorsport, and it was it was really great endurance racing. And I think that’s what we have to take with us. Sleep over the night, repair the cars and carry on.”

Steady progress, and lucky break near the end enabled the No. 25 BMW M Hybrid V8 to grab second in the 12 Hours. Jake Galstad/Lumen

Porsche has already cemented its legacy in the world of endurance sports car racing, from GTs to prototypes. BMW, on the other hand, has been in and out of the sport as a manufacturer, it’s last top-level prototype being the V12 LMR that earned BMW it’s only overall victory at Le Mans in 1999. Getting the latest start among the LMDh manufacturers, they’ve been behind the curve with the M Hybrid V8 the whole way. While the second-place finish for the No. 25 with Connor De Phillippi, Nick Yelloly and Sheldon van der Linde took a lot of luck, the BMW M Team RLL crew had the car there to capitalize on that luck.

“We just had to look back at our philosophy in Daytona, what our weaknesses were, and we had to switch to a different philosophy that would help fix those things,” said de Phillippi. “I think we solved probably two of our five main limiting factors. We probably have another, I would say, three solid ones that we need to we need to hone in on, especially going to another bumpy circuit like Long Beach coming up. That was one of our weaknesses here, the bumps, especially on traction on the exits of the corners. That’s going to be something that we need to dial in for Long Beach and really focus on if we want to be fighting for another podium.”

At Daytona, both of the BMWs hit trouble early with the hybrid systems, although the team soldiered on and were both running at the finish. That running, when there was practically zero chance for a good result, was valuable.

“There’s been a lot of work communicating, and of course on the simulator,” explained Yelloly. “I think we’ve done probably a couple of weeks in there between all of the drivers trying to get get our software working as we wanted to. Obviously it’s new to everyone, but particularly new to us — we haven’t run a prototype car. So we want to get it all working in conjunction perfectly. And I feel like we have already taken a good step forward, but there’s still a lot to improve. And also Daytona, we got a hell of a lot of data, which we hadn’t got in all the tests beforehand. So obviously the boys and girls were able to crawl through all the data, piece things together and come here for the test a couple of weeks ago and make already a small step forwards. Then when we got here we made another step towards the pack. It’s really quite a promising moving forward.”

Both teams and manufacturers have some momentum to carry them forward to Long Beach. A good result there, however, is going to be a challenge given the opposition’s experience on the street circuit. But just like the two previous races, there will be a mass of information gathered, and a lot of things to carry forward as the focus shifts to sprint races for a while