BMW has only won the 24 Hours of Le Mans once overall in the 93 editions of the race, back in 1999 when the V12 LMR took the victory. BMW has been back competing in the top class in the last few years of the race with the M Hybrid V8 cars, but an overall victory continues to elude them.
The M Hybrid V8 cars both performed well in qualifying for this year’s race, with Dries Vanthoor driving the #15 car to a strong fourth place position, while Sheldon van der Linde was just two spots behind him in sixth in the #20 car. Cadillac qualified one-two in the top Hypercar class, but the mood was upbeat in the BMW garage for the race. “It’s good to see the improvement that we’ve made in one year,” said van der Linde. “It’s much bigger than I expected and that’s very positive.” BMW was also strong in the LMGT3 class, with Valentino Rossi put the #46 M4 GT3 EVO in third on the grid, while the #31 M4 GT3 EVO was down in sixteenth.
Once the race got underway, the BMW M Hybrid V8s both dropped back from their starting positions as the Ferrari and Porsche entries moved up. The pair of BMWs had enough pace to stay within the top seven positions for much of the race, but they never had the pace to seriously challenge the Ferrari and Porsche entries. Ferrari had all three of their entries in the top four or five throughout the race, with the #6 Porsche also in the mix.
BMW was very competitive in the LMGT3 class, as the #46 M4 GT3 EVO of Rossi, Kelvin van der Linde and Ahmad Al Harthy was either in the lead or in second place for several hours and in good position for a win or a podium. Unfortunately, the car suffered a mechanical issue eleven hours into the race with van der Linde at the wheel, which led to the retiring of the car. “The incident was very strange,” said van der Linde. “Suddenly, the car shut down, and with it, the power steering failed, leaving me no option but to go straight through the gravel trap. The retirement is extremely disappointing because we led the race for many hours. Although we didn’t have the fastest car, we would have had good chances due to our consistency.”
The #31 M4 GT3 EVO of Yasser Shahin, Timur Boguslavskiy and Augusto Farfus was also running a consistent race until they too had to retire after hitting a rabbit at around 3:00 am in the morning, which damaged the radiator and other components. “They say you can’t win Le Mans; Le Mans chooses its winners,” said Farfus. “That definitely applies to us. Maybe we couldn’t have won, but I think we would have had a chance to fight for the podium, just like last year. Team WRT did a fantastic job, and it’s very unfortunate that we couldn’t bring either of our cars to the finish.”
The pair of M Hybrid V8s didn’t hit any wayward animals, but they did suffer mechanical setbacks that dropped them far down the order by the closing stages of the race. The #20 car of Sheldon van der Linde, René Rast and Robin Frijns finished eighteenth after a long trip to the garage to resolve an engine issue, while the #15 car of Dries Vanthoor, Raffaele Marciello and Kevin Magnussen finish nineteenth after some long stops to work on a hybrid cooling system issue. Ferrari won the race for the third year in a row and also had cars finish in third and fourth, with the #6 Porsche in second.
BMW M Team WRT Team Principal Vincent Vosse was discouraged but was also looking ahead to the team’s next chance to win this famous race. “It’s a disappointing end of the weekend,” he said. “It looked quite good, but we hit some issues two hours from the end and had to do some work on both Hypercars. I’m feeling very sorry for all the guys who have put so much effort in the preparation for this race in the last twelve months. But this is what motorsport is made of. That’s why we like it. We want to hit back as soon as possible.”
BMW M Motorsport is going to have a busy couple of weeks coming up. The Nürburgring 24 Hour race is coming up this weekend in Germany (on the same weekend as the IMSA Six Hours of Watkins Glen), and the Spa 24 Hour race in Belgium is the weekend after. BMW will contest those races with multiple M4 GT3 EVO entries, and drivers Kelvin van der Linde, Raffaele Marciello and Augusto Farfus will be competing in all three 24-hour races.
—David Haueter
[Photos courtesy BMW]
