Two BMWs in Top Five in Michelin Pilot Challenge at Daytona

The IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge season opened its 2026 season on Friday with the four-hour BMW M Endurance Challenge race at Daytona. BMW has sponsored the Daytona race for the past several years now, and it’s one of only two four-hour races on the schedule, the other being the Mid-Ohio race in June.

There were nine BMW M4 GT4 EVO entries at Daytona, with two each from Turner Motorsport, Random Vandals Racing (with one car partnered with ST Racing), Auto Technic Racing and CarBahn with Peregrine Racing, as well as a single entry from Thunder Bunny. BMW had the most entries of any manufacturer among the 51 cars in the GS class, with Ford close behind with eight Mustang GT4 entries.

In qualifying, Sean McAlister, who was on the pole for this race in 2024, was the quickest of the BMW entries in the #39 M4 GT4 EVO that he shares with Jeff Westphal, driving the car to fourth on the grid with a 1:53.656 lap. McAlister was around seven-tenths off the pole time of the #13 Ford Mustang GT4. There were six different manufacturers represented in the top 10 in qualifying, but the #39 was the only BMW in the top 10. The next fastest BMW was the #37 Carbahn entry in 11th.

Over the course of the race, which included several caution periods, there were a group of BMWs that were running in the top ten and even in the top five, though the high-speed nature of the Daytona track seemed to favor the Ford and Aston Martin entries. CarBahn with Peregrine Racing had both cars running in the top 10 early in the race. The CarBahn team has had some bad luck over the years at Daytona and did so again this year. McAlister was in the #39 and was involved in an incident that also did some front-end damage to the car, and as subsequently penalized for incident responsibility. The #37 CarBahn entry of Steve Wetterau and Cameron Shields was competitive but was later penalized for passing the safety car during a caution period.

By the halfway point of the race, it was the #95 Turner Motorsport entry of Dillon Machavern and Luca Mars that was the top BMW and was running in second, with the #27 Auto Technic Racing car of Stevan McAleer, Austin Krainz and Roland Krainz in sixth. The Aston Martin Vantage GT4 EVO entries were clearly the fastest cars in a straight line, and to win at Daytona you need top speed. Luca Mars and Stevan McAleer were in the top-running BMWs in the last half of the race and did a valiant job trying to move up into the top three, but they ultimately finished in fourth (#95) and fifth (#27).

Aston Martin entries finished one-two (#71 and #14), with the #57 Mercedes-AMG in third. The Ford Mustang GT4s, which had seemed so dominant in practice and early in the race, only had two cars in the top 10. The #95 Turner Motorsport entry of Robby Foley and Vin Barletta finished in 10th, with the other BMW entries finishing in 13th, 16h, 20th, 27th, and 30th. The #35 Auto Technic Racing entry had a DNF.

The Michelin Pilot Challenge series races next at Sebring International Raceway in Florida in mid-March, on the same weekend as the 12 Hours of Sebring race for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

—David Haueter
[Photos by Jon van Woerden]