BMW Team RLL to Focus on Single Entry Post-Sebring

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

BMW M Team RLL will reduce its efforts to a single BMW M4 GT3 for the remainder of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season in order to focus on development of its LMDh program for 2023.

Incoming BMW M Motorsport director Andreas Roos confirmed that Connor De Phillippi and John Edwards will pilot the team’s season-long GTD Pro entry, with Augusto Farfus completing the lineup for the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen and Motul Petit Le Mans.

Its No. 24 car, which is being driven by Philipp Eng, Marco Wittmann and Nick Yelloly in this weekend’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, is not expected to appear in any further races this season.

“Rahal will be our partner in LMDh and we have to focus more and more on the LMDh side,” Roos told Sportscar365. “This is why we have to reduce it, at one stage, to one car only which runs the [full] season.

“Then the rest of the team will concentrate mainly on the LMDh topic for the development and testing to get everything together and really focus on being prepared to be in Daytona in 2023 altogether.

“For sure the priority in the end has to be on the LMDh program to be there spot on and to get everything prepared.”

Roos, who has replaced the departed Mike Krack as BMW’s motorsport boss, said the German manufacturer feels confident the teething issues seen with the car at January’s Rolex 24 at Daytona are behind them.

The new-for-2022 GT3 model sustained diffuser issues in the season-opener, which has been fully identified in the weeks since.

“Daytona was not the start we wanted to have but we learned a lot,” Roos said. “We investigated a lot afterwards. The problem is fully understood with the diffuser.

“It was not only specific to Daytona it was an overall thing. 

“We understood fully what it was and why it happened. We keep our fingers crossed it will not happen again. 

“On the other hand we raced here already last year, the 24-hour race, that we also didn’t have any problems. We are positive that it goes in the right direction.”

A total of four BMW M4 GT3s are on the grid for Sebring, including the debut of Paul Miller Racing’s car in the GTD class.

BMW has so far delivered more than 20 of the cars to customers worldwide in what Roos has characterized as a successful initial rollout.

“We are already happy with the amount of cars with what we can sell. This is running quite well,” he said.

“We also have to say that people are interested in our car, which is always nice. But at one stage we also have to deliver the results.

“We keep our fingers crossed for this weekend in Sebring that we have a good result and hopefully even more customers would like to have our car.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John