Connor De Phillippi and Bruno Spengler in the #25 BMW Team RLL M8 GTE finished fourth in the GTLM class and their teammates John Edwards and Jesse Krohn finished fifth in the July 18 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race at Sebring.
The win went to Tommy Milner and Oliver Gavin in the #4 Corvette C8.R. Antonio Garcia and Jordan Taylor were second in the #3 Corvette, while Laurens Vanthoor and Earl Bamber in the #912 Porsche finished third. Edwards battled with the Porsche for a time, but the Porsche got by for third, recovering from a pit road collision between the two Porsches on the first stop that required a new nose on the car. The #911 Porsche, piloted by Nick Tandy and Frederic Mackowiecki, suffered a puncture as a result of the incident. It finished sixth in class.
It was the consensus of the BMW drivers that the M8s did not have the pace of the Corvettes and Porsches. Jesse Krohn said, “Everyone tried their hardest today, but whatever we did was not enough to get a good result. I don’t think we could have done anything differently.”
The performance of Bill Auberlen and Robby Foley in the Turner Motorsport M6 GT3 was the highlight of the race weekend for BMW. Foley and Auberlen finished third in the GTD class behind the winning Lexus RC F GT3 of Jack Hawksworth and AaronTelitz and the second-place Ferrari 488 GT3 of Cooper MacNeil and Toni Vilander.
The fourth WeatherTech Series race of the season will be run at Road America on August 2.—Brian Morgan
[Photos courtesy BMW of North America.]
