Farfus: Sebring Key to Season-Long Car Understanding

Augusto Farfus hopes BMW can use the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring to establish a definitive understanding of the BMW M Hybrid V8 to apply to the remainder of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season, while simultaneously taking a step forward in the competitive order.

BMW M Team RLL is heading into its second race outing with the twin-turbo V8 powered GTP class entry at Sebring after the car made its competitive debut at the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

In that race, both cars encountered reliability issues, with Farfus’ No. 24 car falling victim to hybrid system-related brake problems in the final quarter of the race en route to a sixth-place finish.

The Brazilian explained that BMW is in process of “constant learning” having had a relatively short preparation window before the start of the season and described the the Daytona season opener as the best kind of test for the program.

“We went to Daytona not knowing exactly how the race would be,” Farfus told Sportscar365. “I think we executed fairly well.

“The best test happens when you go racing because that’s the only time you know what the competition is doing.

“You have the true pace of the competition so we understood a lot of points where we could improve the car. Now we are here and we did a test three weeks ago.

“I think we are definitely making progress. The same applies to the others though, but I think we know at least now the weakness of the car.

“We know the areas to [improve] on and Daytona was very important to at least address this and know exactly what we need to tackle.

“Would we be ready for Sebring? [I] don’t know, hopefully. But definitely I think the gap will be smaller and I think that should be our target.”

Farfus explained that the 12-hour race, combined with the data gathered at Daytona, will allow BMW to form a baseline understanding of the strengths and limitations of its LMDh platform.

“[Sebring] will be another very important lesson for us to draw a bigger conclusion, because we went to Daytona, which is a high-speed circuit,” he said.

“Fairly smooth, very flat, low tire degradation. Coming to a track with high tire degradation [that’s] very bumpy, so I think after these two weekends, we’ll be able to really understand our limitations.

“We already have an idea, we think we have a kind of direction we are working on, but we’ll only be able to validate this on Saturday. 

“I think Sebring is more a representative track in terms of American racetracks. Very bumpy, very different.

“Some of the lessons we learned in Daytona of course we can convert and apply to here, but I’m sure after 12 hours here we’ll also be able to draw another conclusion and other points to improve the car.”

Simultaneously, Farfus urged patience, pointing to BMW’s lack of experience in modern top-level prototype competition.

“Everybody is a rookie, but we are the rookie of the rookies,” he said.

“At the end, you have Porsche which did LMP1 for many years. You have Cadillac and Acura, they’re always in the game and we are just back after 20 years away.

“Some of the stuff we got right and some stuff we didn’t get so right.

“That’s what we are here for, to improve, and I hope that among all the manufacturers, we’ll be the one at the end of the year with the steepest learning curve.

“I think you never stop learning, but I think we went to the two extremes from Daytona to Sebring. You cover pretty much all kind of American tracks.

“So that is why I think Sebring will be the last important chapter from our development process.

“But of course we don’t come here to learn, we come here to fight for victory.”