BMW Pole Mastery Continues at Long Beach

Three classic American circuits. Three Motul Pole Awards for Dries Vanthoor and BMW M Team RLL. It has been a clean sweep of Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class qualifying for the duo so far in 2025 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship competition.

Vanthoor, a 26-year-old Belgian who is considered a rising star in international sports car racing, earned the GTP and overall pole position for Saturday’s edition of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, the event’s 50th year. Vanthoor and the No. 24 BMW M Hybrid V8 were also the fastest qualifier at the first two WeatherTech Championship races of the season - the Rolex 24 At Daytona and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.

Daytona International Speedway’s banked oval/road course hybrid, the bumpy Sebring airfield circuit, and the 1.968-mile Long Beach temporary street course have little in common, demonstrating the diversity of the WeatherTech Championship. Yet Vanthoor and the BMW have been the fastest combination over one lap everywhere IMSA has visited this year for his first three career poles.

The challenge for Vanthoor and his co-driver Philipp Eng - along with BMW M Team RLL drivers Sheldon van der Linde and Marco Wittmann, who qualified the No. 25 BMW on the outside front row - is to translate that single lap Friday speed into a Saturday race victory. Their best result this year is fourth place at the Rolex 24.

“Big thanks to the team and BMW for giving us a great car to start the weekend here,” said Vanthoor, whose posted a fast lap of 1:11.539 (99.034 mph) around the tight 11-corner Long Beach layout. “It’s the third time, but now I think it’s finally time to also finish it off.  We didn’t capitalize yet and bring a victory home. It’s been fun, but I think a race win is going to be a little more rewarding.”

BMW ran first and second in both Friday practice sessions at Long Beach, with van der Linde in the No. 25 car fastest in the 60-minute opener before Vanthoor took over at the front in 90 minutes of warmer afternoon conditions.

In the 15-minute qualifying period, Vanthoor was 0.25 seconds faster than van der Linde, whose best time was clocked at 1:11.789.

Nick Tandy, in the championship points-leading No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 he shares with Felipe Nasr, was the only other driver to break 1:12 with a 1:11.989. Mathieu Jaminet, the 2023 Long Beach GTP race winner, locked up the second row for Porsche for Saturday’s 100-minute sprint by qualifying the No. 6 Porsche 963 – co-driven by Matt Campbell – fourth.

With two Acuras in fifth and sixth and two Cadillacs in seventh and eighth, it’s a two-by-two “Noah’s Ark” type of grid by manufacturers in the first eight of 11 spots.

But the key story Friday was BMW’s continued dominance of qualifying in 2025. BMW M Team RLL ended the 2024 season strongly with a 1-2 finish at the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the penultimate round of the WeatherTech Championship season. Improvements to the cars electronic braking, a function of the hybrid power components used in the GTP class, have fueled BMW’s impressive recent single-lap speed.

Vanthoor is a veteran in the FIA World Endurance Championship but this is his first full season in IMSA. He’s a longtime BMW factory driver in GT-class competition who made the step up to prototype competition for BMW in WEC in 2024.

“I’ve always been reasonably okay adapting to new tracks and different circumstances, going back to my GT days,” Vanthoor remarked. “That’s something that helped me out here. Simulators help you get a feel for how the track is, the kind of flow you get with the braking and the gear shifts. But it’s not copy/paste, not a one-to-one comparison to real life.

“It’s all going in the right way, and it shows the car is fast, but now we want more,” he added. “We need to make sure we do a clean race – myself and as a team – and capitalize on those pole positions. You can be on pole position for every race, but if you don’t get the win, nobody is really going to be happy.”

Acura Shares Row 3 Ahead of Home Race Weekend

Nick Yelloly, who qualified fifth in the No. 93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06, brushed the wall late in qualifying but did not significantly damage the car or bring out a red flag. Still, that car ended one spot higher than the sister No. 60 car in sixth, which lost its best qualifying time as a result of causing a red flag in the previous practice session.

Yelloly, along with fellow Acura Meyer Shank drivers Renger van der Zande, Colin Braun, and Tom Blomqvist, visited American Honda headquarters in nearby Torrance on Wednesday. They showed off the Acura ARX-06 prototype and signed autographs for several hours for Honda and Acura associates.

American Honda began selling motorcycles in 1959 from a former photo processing lab studio at 4077 W. Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles with eight employees; more than 2,000 associates now occupy the 101-acre campus in Torrance that opened in 1990. Honda Racing Corporation U.S. was established in 1993 in Santa Clarita. Acura has served as the title sponsor for the Long Beach Grand Prix since 2019.

The 100-minute IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race from Long Beach will be broadcast live on USA Network at 5 p.m. ET on Saturday, April 12. Coverage is also available domestically on Peacock and internationally on the official IMSA YouTube channel.

Results are HERE