BMW M Team WRT opened the second half of the FIA World Endurance Championship season with its weakest result of the year, finishing eighth and twelfth in the 6-hour Lone Star Le Mans at the Circuit of the Americas. Both BMW M4 GT3 EVOs also came away empty-handed in LMGT3 after early trouble. Even so, Robin Frijns and René Rast still share the lead in the drivers’ standings after the #7 Toyota retired from the lead late in the race.

After two wins and two second places in the opening half of the FIA World Endurance Championship, BMW M Team WRT arrived in Texas as one of the form teams of the Hypercar field. The “Lone Star Le Mans” at the Circuit of the Americas told a very different story: neither BMW M Hybrid V8 had the pace to challenge, and the squad left Austin with a single points finish.

Eighth and twelfth for the Hypercars

Kevin Magnussen, Raffaele Marciello and Dries Vanthoor started the #15 BMW M Hybrid V8 from eleventh on the grid and used efficient running to climb into the top five during the 6-hour race. A safety car period roughly 45 minutes from the flag undid that progress, and the car dropped back to eighth as its direct rivals pulled away.

The #20 Shell BMW M Hybrid V8 of Frijns, Rast and Sheldon van der Linde fared worse still, taking the flag in twelfth. Intense heat and high humidity added to the difficulty across the weekend.

“We didn’t have the necessary pace with our Hypercars, but at least we scored some points,” said team principal Vincent Vosse.

The championship picture barely moves

A late retirement for the #7 Toyota, which had been leading, kept the title fight from swinging away from BMW. Frijns and Rast remain tied at the top of the drivers’ standings, while BMW M Motorsport holds second in the manufacturers’ table on 131 points, nine behind Toyota.

BMW M Motorsport boss Andreas Roos was blunt about the weekend, saying the team could not build on its strong first half and did not deliver a flawless race with either car. He described the eighth and twelfth places as disappointing relative to what the BMW M Hybrid V8 has achieved so far, and added that he felt sorry for the competitors whose retirement worked in BMW’s favour.

Frijns said a problem during his pit stop cost several seconds, and that even without it the car would not have managed better than sixth or seventh.

Trouble for both M4 GT3 EVOs in LMGT3

The GT class went no better. The #69 car picked up a puncture in a minor early collision that also filled the cockpit with heavy smoke, forcing Anthony McIntosh into an emergency pit stop and earning the car a stop-and-go penalty for the unscheduled visit. McIntosh, Parker Thompson and Dan Harper recovered to eleventh.

The #32 entry of Augusto Farfus, Sean Gelael and Darren Leung ran as high as third before a faulty sensor triggered a long repair stop; combined with a two-minute penalty for exceeding track limits, that left the car sixteenth. Gelael said the team lost ten laps in the pits and spent the remainder of the race gathering data.

Harper pointed to high temperatures and tyre wear as the main problems, and said the focus now shifts to Fuji.

What it means

BMW’s championship position survived largely on someone else’s misfortune, which is a fragile way to lead a title fight with the season’s closing rounds approaching. The nine-point gap to Toyota in the manufacturers’ standings is small enough to close, but the team’s own assessment — that it lacked pace in Austin’s heat and did not run cleanly with any of its four cars — is the more pressing issue.

The FIA WEC season continues in Fuji, Japan.

Source: www.press.bmwgroup.com