The IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge championship raced at the Road America circuit in Wisconsin this past weekend of August 2-3, 2025, and BMW teams once again had a strong weekend for the second race in a row. Three weeks ago, at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, BMW M4 GT4 EVO entries finished one-two and had another entry in fourth. There was no win in the cards at Road America, but BMWs did finish in positions second through fifth.
There were five M4 GT4 EVO entries at Road America, including two cars each from CarBahn and Turner Motorsport and one entry from Auto Technic Racing. We’ve consistently seen this year that the #39 CarBahn with Peregrine Racing entry of Sean McAlister and Jeff Westphal is usually the quickest BMW in qualifying with McAlister doing the duty, and he was once again the fastest BMW in qualifying at Road America. He put the #39 car second on the grid behind the pole-sitting #13 Ford Mustang GT4. The only other BMW to qualify in the top ten was the #95 Turner car driven by Dillon Machavern in tenth.
Jeff Westphal and Sean McAlister finished fourth to close the championship points gap.
Michelin Pilot Challenge races sometimes tend to have a lot of incidents and accidents that lead to caution periods and there were plenty of those at Road America, with five four course cautions and only 42 laps of green flag running. For the most part, the BMW entries ran a clean race. One exception was an incident between the #95 BMW of Machavern and the #4 CarBahn entry driven by Steve Wetterau. The two came together when battling for the same turn, which sent the #4 car off the track and ended the #95 cars day with a broken suspension.
Auto Technic Racing got on the podium in third with drivers Stevan McAleer and Austin Krainz.
The BMW teams managed to get the strategy right with all the caution periods as well. The #4 CarBahn entry, which is not a full season entry, was the highest placed BMW at the end of the race with a second-place finish for Steve Wetterau and Cameron Shields (shown in top photo). They were joined on the podium by Auto Technic Racing drivers Stevan McAleer and Austin Krainz, who now have two podium finishes in a row after finishing second in Canada. BMW entries also took up positions fourth and fifth, with the #39 CarBahn with Peregrine Racing BMW of McAlister and Westphal in fourth and the #96 Turner car of Patrick Gallagher and Matt Dalton in fifth. The race was won by the #13 Mustang that started from the pole.
Matt Dalton and Patrick Gallagher finished fifth for Turner Motorsport.
The fourth-place finish by the #39 car allowed Westphal and McAlister to close the gap in championship points to the leading Porsche of Luca Mars and Jan Heylen, who only finished seventeenth at Road America. Unfortunately, they lost some ground to Mustang driver Jenson Altzman, who won at Road America and sits second in championship points. Westphal and McAlister are now 120 points behind Mars and Heylen and 30 points behind Altzman.
The next Michelin Pilot Challenge race is at VIR on August 22nd-24th. The series will then race at Indianapolis on September 19th-21st before closing out the season at Road Atlanta on October 8th-11th.
—David Haueter
[Photos courtesy LAT Images]
