De Phillippi: BMW Making Strides in LMDh Car’s Systems

Photo: BMW

The recent gains in performance and reliability for the BMW M Hybrid V8 has been attributed to both BMW M Motorsport and BMW M Team RLL better understanding and optimizing the car’s advanced systems according to Connor De Phillippi.

De Phillippi and season-long co-driver Nick Yelloly head into this weekend’s Motul Course de Monterey powered by Hyundai N fourth in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTP drivers’ standings following a pair of second-place finishes at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring and Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.

After initial struggles at Daytona, De Phillippi said he’s hopeful of continuing the momentum at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, although it does present new challenges of its own.

“I think it’s proven this year that you don’t know what to expect going into a weekend as far as who’s strong, who might have an advantage,” he said.

“Certainly we’ve been on the back foot all season being just late in development and slowly playing catch up.

“Everyone in the team from RLL and BMW have worked very hard to close that gap.

“At Long Beach we made a big step. We don’t have any setup info or any prior data to lean on because we’ve never run a prototype at Laguna, so we’re purely relying on the simulator, which for us at Long Beach, proved to be pretty similar as far as giving us the baseline.

“That’s a positive. We had four days in the sim last week. Hopefully we have a good baseline to start off with.

“If we can make another step like we did in Long Beach, I think we’ll be there right in the mix. In the race we had solid long-run pace in Long Beach.”

When asked by Sportscar365 on what areas he feels they’ve made the biggest gains with the Dallara-chassied prototype, De Phillippi said it’s been largely systems-related.

“For us it’s really been trying to basically connect all of the elements together,” he explained.

“A lot of it has been on the systems side with traction control, braking, how the whole hybrid system is working together, getting all of that to tie together has been a challenge to get every last little bit of it and how it intermingles and how it works.

“That’s helped us a lot with drivability, which then allows us as drivers to feel confident to really attack the track. So that’s been a big step for us.

“Then [also it’s] just general setup. Obviously a lot of the testing we did early on was just basically get the car running and try to pound laps. Now we’re actually able to try to explore different setups, different combinations of springs, dampers, etc.

“That’s been a fun process for us, to finally start getting to learn a bit about the car and explore what it offers us and how to extract the most out of it.

“We did a good job of that at Long Beach. Now we have to see if that similar philosophy  can translate to a higher downforce place.

“It’s been a challenge but they’ve put a lot of work in to make all of these systems work together and I think we should have a good next step into Laguna as well. So I’m excited to see where that puts us.”

While both Acura and Cadillac have modern-era prototype experience at Laguna Seca, and Penske to a degree when it ran the factory Acura program, BMW has no previous knowledge base to work from, although De Phillippi said he doesn’t necessarily take that as a disadvantage due to nature of the new cars.

“It’s an unknown for everybody,” he said. “I think this track in general is substantially different compared to what we’ve had so far this year.

“There’s a lot of high speed stuff but also a lot of combined braking, combined traction, which we really haven’t had a ton of in this way.

“For us, at least, that’s where a lot of the gains we found going into Long Beach is where we found the most gains there.

“To see if that is continuing to up our level going into this track, where it’s similar characteristics as far as the area where we found that performance is a lot of Laguna.

“What works in the sim not always translates to the track. That’s still an unknown. But for sure we’re going in with a mindset that we’re going to be in the mix and as long as we do a clean race and a good job, there’s certainly a chance to be up front.”

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