“A bit cherry on a giant cake.” That is how Dries Vanthoor described his pole place for the Daytona 24 Hours this weekend. The BMW driver identified after he’d secured a primary prime spot in qualifying for BMW’s M Hybrid V8 LMDh that there is “nonetheless a giant factor to occur”. And he was speaking in regards to the race.
The true significance of Vanthoor’s pole lap wasn’t that it has put him on the entrance of the sphere for the beginning of the opening spherical of the 2025 IMSA SportsCar Championship, however that it supplied the ultimate proof that the M Hybrid V8 is there on outright tempo.
It backed up a powerful begin to BMW’s third North American marketing campaign with the LMDh it has developed along side Dallara: the automotive topped 4 of the six periods within the pre-event Roar check final weekend, was then quickest qualifying on Thursday and in among the many prime three within the instances in two of the trio of free apply periods.
BMW has been the underachiever of the brand new GTP period in IMSA that began in 2023, however a few wins. Victory within the Watkins Glen 6 Hours in June ’23 was inherited on the disqualification of the Porsche that crossed the road in first place and the 1-2 for the Rahal crew final September on the Indianapolis owed so much to the moist circumstances and the power of the vehicles to stretch its power allocation.
That is the distinction this time round. The M Hybrid is bang on the tempo, primary forward of Acura, Porsche and Cadillac within the pecking order of the GTP full-timers. (The opposite large underachiever, Lamborghini, is barely scheduled to contest the 5 long-distance rounds this yr.)
BMW has at all times been eager to level out {that a} late resolution to return to the top of sportscar racing with what grew to become the M Hybrid was made late – in June of 2022, to be actual, which explains why it opted to affix IMSA first in ’23 and solely broaden into the World Endurance Championship in season two final yr. A double programme straight out of the field would have been overambitious.
“Clearly once we began the programme we had been late with the choice and we had been at all times catching up,” says head of BMW M Motorsport Andreas Roos. “From the center of final yr, we noticed some nice improvement by way of our efficiency.
#24 BMW M Crew RLL BMW M Hybrid V8: Philipp Eng, Dries Vanthoor, Kevin Magnussen, Raffaele Marciello
Photograph by: Bob Meyer
“We had been getting there, Dries with the quickest lap in [first] qualifying on the Le Mans 24 Hours earlier than Hyperpole, but in addition the 1-2 at Indianapolis and the rostrum within the WEC at Fuji. We had been getting increasingly more out of the automotive and utilizing the potential of the automotive. This regarded promising for us and we knew we nonetheless had fairly some issues to tweak on the automotive to make it higher.”
That included invoking one of many evo joker efficiency upgrades allowed to producers beneath the LMDh guidelines. For this season there’s a brake system replace, which, insists Roos, is aimed much less at outright efficiency and extra at “consistency and driveability”.
There has additionally been a change in the best way BMW goes about its racing with the M Hybrid. Porsche and Penske have made a lot of what it calls its “one crew” strategy straddling the WEC and IMSA – it insists it was central to its ultra-successful season with the 963 LMDh in 2024 that yielded the drivers’ title in each collection in addition to a victory at Daytona 12 months in the past.
BMW runs with Rahal, BMW M Crew RLL to provide it its official identify, in IMSA and the Belgian WRT squad in WEC. However for this yr there’s a larger cross-pollination throughout the 2 collection. Vanthoor and Sheldon van der Linde, regulars with WRT final yr, are additionally contesting the total IMSA marketing campaign with Rahal. It is a transfer aimed toward driving on improvement of the M Hybrid V8 at a larger price.
“Clearly it’s paying off,” says Roos. “It helps with the interchange [of information] on the engineering facet. Having drivers doing each collection will assist us to speed up the programme by sharing the knowledge. It makes it extra of an open guide. It’s a win-win scenario as a result of the drivers additionally get extra seat time, which is at all times useful.”
BMW’s first appointment within the WEC this yr shall be in Qatar for the 10-hour fixture that opens proceedings within the Center East on the finish of subsequent month. Enhancing on that second place notched up by Vanthoor, Marciello and Marco Wittmann over six hours at Fuji final September is “clearly the purpose”, says Roos.
BMW’s stand up the sphere over the second half of the 2024 WEC was aided by a little bit of assist from the Steadiness of Efficiency. Sequence rulemakers the Car Membership de l’Ouest and the FIA clearly said that they’d edge up newcomers over the course of the season. Alpine, which pipped BMW to fourth spot within the producers’ standings, benefitted from the identical philosophy.
#24 BMW M Crew RLL BMW M Hybrid V8: Philipp Eng, Dries Vanthoor, Kevin Magnussen, Raffaele Marciello
Photograph by: IMSA
There’s additionally some assist this weekend for BMW beneath the IMSA BoP. The M Hybrid is racing on the minimal weight of 1030kg and the utmost energy of 520kW or 698bhp allowed in GTP. However deciphering the BoP is extra sophisticated than prior to now.
There may be additionally a brand new factor to the BoP in IMSA at Daytona, which mimics the ‘powergain’ launched in WEC at Le Mans final yr. The vehicles are given a plus or minus determine above a sure velocity in a transfer designed to steadiness the straightline efficiency of the vehicles. In WEC powergain kicks in at 250km/h (155mph), whereas in IMSA there’s a linear phase-in between 230 and 240km/h (142 and 149mph).
BMW has been given a determine for the race of minus 0.6%, whereas Porsche’s 963 LMDh loses 3.8% and the Acura ARX-06 3.5%. Cadillac’s V-Sequence.R positive factors 2.4% energy above the magic 240km/h determine, however it’s racing down at 500kW (670bhp) and weighs in 30kg greater than the BMW.
BMW has clearly made itself favorite going into the Rolex 24 on Saturday, but when it has to have its cake and eat it then it must be fast on the sharp finish of the race. Daytona is historically gained within the closing hours, almost certainly after a late security automotive that regroups the sphere and units up a dramatic sprint to the flag.
Kevin Magnussen, again in sportscar racing with BMW after what he guarantees actually is the tip of his Formulation 1 profession, is aware of the significance of holding the automotive in good condition by way of the period. It is simple to neglect that the Dane has raced on this occasion twice prior to now, the primary time in 2021 as a part of a full IMSA marketing campaign with the Ganassi Cadillac squad and the second on a one-off with the identical crew the next yr. He had joined Peugeot for its 2022 WEC entry, solely to ship out of the programme to return to F1 when a possibility arose again at Haas.
“It’s the final two hours at Daytona the place it occurs,” says Magnussen, who shares the pole-winning #24 Rahal entry with Vanthoor, Philipp Eng and Raffaele Marciello at Daytona earlier than switching over to the WEC to share with the final of these three. “You want the toe-ins on the entrance to be appropriate and all of the flicks and the aero components on the automotive to nonetheless be there.
“You want the automotive to be good and glossy for the final two hours when it actually issues.”
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