The Long Beach, California street circuit has been the site of many BMW Team RLL successes since the team’s first season racing for BMW in 2009. The team has finished the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race, for a second consecutive year sponsored by BUBBA Burger, with at least one BMW on the podium every year except last season. The Bobby Rahal-led team has won the street race three times; once with the BMW M3 GT in 2011 and twice with the BMW Z4 GTLM, in 2013 and 2015. Last year, Bill Auberlen qualified the new M6 GTLM racer on the class pole position, but finished a disappointing fifth after multiple contact with competitors ended another podium opportunity.
The Long Beach street course is only 1.968 miles long and the race is the shortest of the season at 100 minutes. Far different than the season’s opening 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring endurance events, success is often dictated by how the caution periods fall and how a team executes the race’s one planned pit stop and driver change.
To date in 2017, the team has scored a season’s best sixth place finish at the 12 Hours of Sebring. At Long Beach, season-long drivers Bill Auberlen and Alexander Sims will be in the No. 25 M6 and John Edwards and Martin Tomczyk will pilot the No. 24 M6.
The GTLM class Balance of Performance was adjusted by IMSA following Sebring and the M6 GTLM will benefit from an increase in boost in the rev range from 2000 to 7250 rpm. The fuel tank volume was also increased by 3 liters to total 108 liters of E20 fuel.
“It’s been a challenging year,” said Bobby Rahal, Team Principal. “However, if you look back at how we did at Long Beach last year – being on pole with Bill, with the car in its third race at that stage, the race was very positive for us. I would like to think that we can repeat that performance this year. It’s a very big car and of course it’s a very narrow track so that gives our drivers an extra challenge. If you look at our history at Long Beach, we’ve been pretty successful with BMW Team RLL having won three times and earned a number of podiums beyond that so we go there with a positive outlook based on past performance from both BMW and the team.”
The Bubba Burger Sports Car Grand Prix At Long Beach takes the green flag at 1:05 p.m. PT Saturday, April 8th, with the live television broadcast beginning at 4:00 p.m. ET on FOX.
