It was 25 years ago that Bill Auberlen had his debut season in the BMW V12 LMR prototype, in the 1999 American Le Mans Series (ALMS). With Jo Winkelhock as a co-driver in the #43 car, the duo scored a second-place finish at the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta (along with Steve Soper), a third at Laguna Seca and a second at Las Vegas. Two of their biggest rivals in 1999 were teammates JJ Lehto and Jörg Müller, who were paired together in the #42 car. Auberlen raced the car again in 2000 with Jean-Marc Gounon and had podium finishes at Mosport and Las Vegas.
Auberlen had made a name for himself by the end of 1998 with success in the Team PTG E36 M3s but had also proven himself in faster cars, having driven a Riley & Scott Mk III for BMW Team Rafanelli in a few races in 1998 and a McLaren F1 GTR at Le Mans the same year.
Still, he was more surprised than anyone when he was named as a driver in the V12 LMR program. “They have the motorsport banquet at the end of every year and that time (1998) it was in Austria,” he recalls. “There was no talk of any programs that I was going to do (for 1999). I was just going to sign my contract, and they would find something for me to do. We go to the banquet, and they opened the tent up and in came this beautiful sound and a car we’d never seen before as the V12 LMR made its appearance. I’m ogling and awing over it, and they were talking about the program, and my name was announced as one of the drivers! I had no idea that was going to happen. I remember after that moment that I just wanted to go home. I didn’t want someone to come up and tell me they had made a mistake.”
Bill Auberlen (second driver from left) with drivers Jo Winkelhock (sitting on car next to Auberlen), Steve Soper (standing next to Auberlen) and JJ Lehto with the Schnitzer team in 1999.
Auberlen raced the BMW V12 LM98 for privateer team Price & Bscher along with Steve Soper and Thomas Bscher in the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1999, as the #43 V12 LMR was driven by Jo Winkelhock, Yannick Dalmas and Pier Luigi Martini. The LM98 was built by Williams as the precursor to the V12 LMR. “Williams had to take a shot at it to start with and built the LM98, but the dash was in a bad position, and it was compromised on the way the car was made,” says Auberlen. “They refined it one more time after that and hit it out of the park with the V12 LMR.”
Auberlen’s first race in the V12 LMR in 1999 was supposed to be at Mosport (now Canadian Tire Motorsport Park) with Winkelhock, but BMW Motorsport withdrew over safety concerns. “We get to Mosport, which is a beautiful track, and I took Jo on a drive around the track,” remembers Auberlen. “I remember he kept asking where it was that his brother died (Jo’s brother Manfred died after wrecking a Porsche 962C at Mosport in 1985). This was before the track had some safety updates, and we had a lot of conversations about the safety before we withdrew. We had already done a practice session, and the car was a rocket ship, but we packed up and went home.”
Auberlen was the lone American on the team run by Schnitzer Motorsport, but he quickly fit in. “Between Charly Schnitzer and his brother, they made me feel at home right away,” he says. “My crew guys were my guys. We went to war together; we hung out together and had fun together. To this day we still text each other. All the drivers on that team were masters – guys like Lehto, Müller and Soper. Auberlen adapted quickly to the V12 LMR but found JJ Lehto to be on another level. “You always want to be faster than your teammates,” he says. “With the GT stuff, I could get a leg up on a lot of guys, but it wasn’t easy to get a leg up on Lehto in a prototype. He was a master in the V12 LMR.”
Auberlen drove with two vastly different co-drivers in 1999 and 2000. Like Auberlen, 1999 teammate Jo Winkelhock was coming out of GT/Touring cars. “Jo was as laid back and as cool a guy as you’re ever going to find,” he recalls. “He was a character. He would smoke before he got in the car. We would do training in the Alps for BMW, and I remember we would do these 50-mile-long bike rides. We were killing ourselves, but Jo would always say his bike was broken. By day three, the BMW chase team followed him everywhere with a spare bike. He was his own guy and was very easy to get along with.”
Jean-Marc Gounon, who drove with Auberlen in 2000, came from a Formula 1 background, having raced for Minardi in 1993 and for Simtek in 1994. “Gounon always wanted a very specific chassis, so we had to run all the way down the road (with setup) and prove to him that it wasn’t quicker, and then come all the way back, so we spent a couple of races doing that,” says Auberlen. “He was a prankster and loved to play tricks on JJ Lehto, who didn’t have the same sense of humor. They were times when we would flat-spot the tires on our rental car to death. It turned out that once Lehto (and teammate Jörg Müller) had the exact same rental car, so Gounon swapped the tires on our cars. They figured out really quickly that we played a trick on them, but we all had a good time together.”
Auberlen, of course, is still racing for BMW today in the M4 GT3 but also gets some seat time in the V12 LMR that’s owned by BMW of North America. “I still drive it every year in historic races,” he says. “You still pull that shifter, and it never stops accelerating and you have that beautiful V12 that’s indestructible. The only way you could break that car was if you drove it into a wall – it never broke. It was designed really well and is still a pleasure to drive.” —David Haueter
[Photos courtesy BMW]
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