Farfus: BMW on “Right Path” With LMDh Car

Nick Yelloly and Augusto Farfus feel the BMW M Hybrid V8 will be competitive right out of the box following encouraging progress made in testing with the LMDh car so far.

Yelloly and Farfus, along with Connor De Phillippi and Philipp Eng, were announced last week as BMW M Team RLL’s full-season drivers in the GTP class of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

All four drivers have turned laps in European testing, either in initial shakedowns at circuits in Italy or the first two proper tests at Circuit de-Catalunya Barcelona and Motorland Aragon prior to the Dallara-chassised prototype having been shipped to the U.S. earlier this month.

“It is at very early stages, but you feel if a car is born right or not, and I have to say this one feels right,” Farfus told Sportscar365.

“Of course it is still a long way from feeling right and winning races, but I think we are on the right path.”

Yelloly echoed the Brazilian’s sentiments, stating that continual gains have been made after each test.

“[My] first impressions were actually very, very positive, and the most important thing for me and what’s been great about BMW working so hard behind the scenes is that each test we’ve had improvements.

“Whether it be inside the cockpit for driver fit, whether it be general setup, system side, the way the hybrid system is working with the combustion engines, each time we’ve gone out on track we’ve had improvements.

“So if we can keep continuing like that each test, we should be able to run at the front straight away.”

BMW began its testing program in July, six months after Porsche, which was the first LMDh manufacturer to hit the track.

Both drivers, however, don’t feel this places them at a disadvantage, with BMW having benefited from other manufacturers’ early testing woes.

“Porsche actually did a lot of work behind the scenes with Bosch, because it’s a common part, and it had a lot of issues to start with and now they’ve been ironed out, so we’ve had a smoother run into development thanks to the cooperation with Bosch and [Porsche],” said Yelloly.

“So I don’t think we are as far behind and everyone may think, and I hope to be fighting wheel-to-wheel with them in January.”

BMW has derived its internal combustion engine from the P66/3 powerplant used by the German manufacturer in DTM. Farfus noted how this has likely helped BMW’s reliability thus far. 

“I have to admit, we didn’t have any major problems,” he said. “Having an engine which comes from DTM, which is kind of bulletproof, this made our life a lot easier to just plug-and-play two turbos and drive.

“So we have an engine whose baseline is right, the drivability of that engine has been proven in DTM, so it takes a lot of the load.

“At the moment, I think the problems we have, considering the complexity of the car, are very small.”