Van der Linde Was “Willing to Risk Everything” for Win

Photo: Sam Cobb/BMW

Sheldon van der Linde said he was “willing to risk everything” for the win in Sunday’s TireRack Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, after making a last-gasp pass on Earl Bamber for top honors.

The South African and co-driver Dries Vanthoor gave the Vincent Vosse-led WRT operation its first IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship victory, marking BMW’s first GTP win in more than a year.

It came in a race that was controlled largely by the No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac V-Series.R of Bamber and points leader Jack Aitken, until the closing stages when both cars were dicing through traffic.

“I was pretty frustrated after the restart to not get past him earlier,” said van der Linde. “I had two opportunities into Turn 7, where I got stuck behind GTs, then he got away again and it was back and forth the whole time in traffic.

“Both times he got kind of lucky and I knew I had to wait. My engineer said to me on the radio, ‘You’ve got one more pack of GTs with ten minutes to go’ and I knew that was my last chance to get him.

“Because on pace, they were just too fast for us today.

“I tried to stay close to him before that. He got stuck behind a GT car going into Turn 10 and I got a very good run and went all the way into the inside so he wasn’t able to see me in his mirrors.”

Van der Linde said he knew Bamber would likely not put his car at risk given the championship implications.

“I was willing to risk everything for the win today,” he said. “I know how important it is for these guys to get it.

“I knew they (Action Express) obviously wouldn’t take too much risk being in the championship fight so I had that in the back of my mind going into the race already.

“That was our advantage. We could play elbows out and they couldn’t.

“I knew I had to use that to our advantage and it worked out perfectly with the move into Turn 12.”

While it marked Vanthoor’s second GTP win, it was van der Linde’s first WeatherTech Championship overall victory, in what came after a string of bad luck that kept the No. 24 BMW M Hybrid off the podium since the season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona.

“We’ve been waiting a long time for this one,” said van der Linde. “We’ve been knocking on the door for this win for the last year.

“We came close at Laguna, Detroit, Road America. Three different events where we came close and we never got to stand on the top step, which hurt, nevermind we didn’t even get on the podium in those races.

“It’s nice to give a reward back to the team for all the work they’ve put in for the two years to build up this program, and now to materialize it and get a good result is a dream come true.

“We know that we’re not in the championship fight anymore, so every result that we can have now to the end of the year is a bonus.

“We’ve won in WEC this year. We’ve had two wins with both cars and this was the only thing missing from our CV for this year. Now one win here with us is an incredible year for the team itself.

“We’re only going to get stronger as next year progresses. So it was extremely important to get one on the board now and show that we have the confidence to do it now.

“Hopefully we’ll use the momentum to keep getting these results.”

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