\n Long Beach. Dries Vanthoor (BEL) and Sheldon van der Linde
\n (RSA) finished the first sprint race of the season in the IMSA
\n WeatherTech SportsCar Championship (IMSA Series) in the BMW M Team
\n WRT #24 BMW M Hybrid V8 in fifth place. The #25 sister car started
\n from second position after a strong qualifying by Marco Wittmann
\n (GER), but Philipp Eng (AUT) dropped a long way back during his
\n stint following a collision and subsequent repairs. Turner
\n Motorsport celebrated a major success with second place for Robby
\n Foley and Patrick Gallagher (both USA) in the #96 BMW M4 GT3 EVO.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n Comments after the race:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n Andreas Roos (Head of BMW M Motorsport): \u201cFifth place
\n is not what we had hoped for. The starting position for car #25 was
\n very good after Marco Wittmann\u2019s strong qualifying, but unfortunately,
\n due to the contact and subsequent repairs, we couldn\u2019t convert it into
\n a corresponding race result. Car #24 didn\u2019t have an ideal qualifying,
\n but at least managed to gain a position in the race. Fifth place means
\n important points for the championship, but we wanted more. Turner
\n Motorsport gave a strong performance in the GTD class and rightly gets
\n to celebrate on the podium.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n Vincent Vosse (Team Principal BMW M Team WRT): \u201cThe
\n points for fifth place with our car #24 are important, especially as
\n we are competing in a long championship season, but of course, we had
\n hoped for more. Unfortunately, the collision involving car #25 made
\n our race much more difficult. In the end, fifth place is okay, but
\n nothing more. We accept the result and focus on Laguna Seca.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
\n Dries Vanthoor (#24 BMW M Hybrid V8, BMW M Team WRT,
\n 5th place GTP): \u201cOf course, it\u2019s not the result
\n we had envisioned. We weren’t completely sorted at the start of the
\n weekend, which also put us behind in qualifying. In the race, I tried
\n to preserve the car and the tyres so that Sheldon could push hard
\n towards the end. That worked well, but we struggle in direct fights
\n with other cars. We collected important points, but now we need to
\n take a step forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
\n Marco Wittmann (#25 BMW M Hybrid V8, BMW M Team WRT,
\n 11th place GTP): \u201cWe got off to a good start
\n this weekend and, with a front-row starting position, had a great
\n chance to fight for the podium. However, those opportunities vanished
\n with the accident \u2013 luck just wasn\u2019t on our side today. So now we have
\n to look ahead. As a team, we\u2019ve made progress in various areas. We can
\n carry this positive trend into the next race at Laguna Seca, bounce
\n back, and earn the reward we deserve.”<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
\n Robby Foley (#96 BMW M4 GT3 EVO, Turner Motorsport,
\n 2nd place GTD): \u201cIt was a fantastic day for us
\n at Long Beach. Patrick had an excellent first stint and stayed out of
\n trouble. After that, we were able to take advantage of a few
\n opportunities during the restarts to pass competitors and then defend
\n second place. We achieved a great result and earned important points
\n for our team. Now we need to carry this momentum to Laguna Seca and
\n try to pick up right where we left off.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long Beach. Dries Vanthoor (BEL) and Sheldon van der Linde (RSA) finished the first sprint race of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[119101,119105,119104,119103,119102,131,133,132],"class_list":["post-275333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-bmw-m-motorsport","tag-customer-racing","tag-gt-racing","tag-imsa-series","tag-lmdh","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}