BMW Leads When It Counts At Road America En Route to 1-2 Sweep

BMW M Team RLL put a season of disappointment and frustration in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship behind it with a 1-2 finish in the Motul SportsCar Grand Prix Sunday at Road America.

Dries Vanthoor and Philipp Eng drove the No. 24 BMW M Hybrid V8 to their first win of the season, taking the checkered flag 2.524 seconds ahead of Sheldon van der Linde and Marco Wittmann in the similar No. 25 car.

Vanthoor earned pole positions for the first four WeatherTech Championship races of the season, but until Sunday, the best results he and Eng achieved this year were a pair of third-place finishes at the California double on the streets of Long Beach and WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. The 1-2 at Road America matches BMW M Team RLL’s result last September in the six-hour TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.

Sunday’s race was broken up by five full-course cautions, which rewarded teams that played their energy management strategy correctly. That was the key to the BMW victory.

After qualifying second and third, BMW split its strategies and pitted the No. 24 just 18 minutes into the race. With an hour remaining, they ran eighth and ninth. But Team RLL pitted both cars under green with just under an hour to go, making them first to make their final pit stop.

The strategy paid off when the race’s final caution flew about seven minutes later. When the other nine GTP competitors pitted, the No. 24 and 25 leapt forward to the front of the field, and they managed the pace in the 21-lap run to the finish – the longest stretch of green flag racing in the 2-hour, 40-minute contest.

“It’s been a weird season, with a lot of good and a lot of bad,” Vanthoor commented. “To win now is very nice.”

Strategy aside, the victory was far from straightforward for the No. 24 team. After falling to near the back after the early pit stop, Vanthoor moved quickly back to fourth place. At the next stop, another prototype entry struck one of the BMW team’s mechanics, although Vanthoor indicated post-race he understood the mechanic to be OK.

The slow stop turned out to be a blessing, because it motivated BMW M Team RLL to adopt the aggressive tactic of being the first to make their last stops.

“The luck has not always been on our side this season, and for sure we also did many mistakes ourselves, which we need to clean up,” Vanthoor said. “Today it just worked out. When you’re in such a bad position, you can take some risks, and it worked out today. At the end, our pace was strong enough to stay in front. We were not on pole position today, but we finally executed a perfect race.”

BMW M Team RLL has earned 24 race wins in IMSA competition, including four at Road America. The team’s first victory came at the popular Wisconsin venue in the American Le Mans Series’ GT2 class at Road America in 2009.

Eng has driven for BMW M Team RLL since 2018 and he paid tribute to Rahal and the organization. BMW M Motorsport recently announced that Team RLL will not return to operate the IMSA GTP program after this season, but did announce plans to continue in the category with a new provider. 

“I got into a groove, and the team did a strategic masterclass, pitting us in the early side of the window,” he said. “I just had to bring it home. The car was fast, it was on rails.

“I’m very happy for everybody in Team RLL,” he added. “I texted with Bobby yesterday after qualifying and said, ‘Let’s finish this on a high.’ And here we are! I think I should probably text with him more often.”

Motul Pole Award winner Nick Yelloly partnered with Renger van der Zande to finish third in the No. 93 Acura Meyer Shank Acura ARX-06, followed by Jack Aitken and Earl Bamber in the No. 31 Cadillac Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R.

A fifth-place finish for Matt Campbell and Mathieu Jaminet in the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 has unofficially extended their advantage in the GTP championship standings to 75 points over their teammates Nick Tandy and Felipe Nasr in the No. 7 car, who finished 11th. Eng and Vanthoor now sit third, 181 points in arrears. Acura cut Porsche’s lead in the GTP Manufacturer championship in half from 90 points to 45 with two races remaining.

LMP2: AO Loves That Winning Feeling

Like BMW M Team RLL in the GTP class, AO Racing was having a difficult time converting Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) class Motul Pole Awards into race wins this year.

That all changed in the last round of the WeatherTech Championship in mid-July, as PJ Hyett and Dane Cameron claimed the victory in AO’s purple dragon-liveried No. 99 ORECA LMP2 07 called ‘Spike.’ They made it two in a row Sunday at Road America with their second consecutive triumph.

Hyett again earned the pole – his seventh in 11 attempts for an IMSA-sanctioned LMP2 race – and he and Cameron dominated on what Chicago-area native Hyett considers his home (and favorite) racetrack.

They won by 4.167 seconds over Connor De Phillippi and Jeremy Clarke in the No. 43 Inter Europol Competition ORECA LMP2 07, with Mikkel Jensen and Steven Thomas notching third place in the No. 11 TDS Racing ORECA LMP2 07.

The win was about as straightforward as they come in LMP2 competition, and Hyett and Cameron took the lead of the season point standings in the process. They unofficially lead by 97 points over Daniel Goldburg of United Autosports USA.

“It was a dream weekend,” said Hyett. “Home race, winning from the pole – it’s hard to beat what happened here this weekend, to bring home a victory at my favorite racetrack for the AO crew. Amazing.”

“Getting the first win (at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park) was huge for this program,” added Cameron, who took his 19th win in IMSA competition. “It’s rolling really well right now. 

“We knew we were good early in the season, but kind of needed to stabilize things a little bit. PJ is driving phenomenally well, which is making my work easier. We got everyone integrated and comfortable and got some procedures in place, and it’s all bearing fruit now.”

GTP and LMP2 competitors now enter a late-summer break, as IMSA’s GT classes headline the next event on the schedule – the August 22-24 Michelin GT Challenge at VIRginia International Raceway. The full four-class WeatherTech Championship field reconvenes September 19-21 for the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.

Results are HERE