Vanthoor Hoping Road America Will Be “Turning Point” for BMW

Photo: Sam Cobb/BMW

Dries Vanthoor said he’s hoping this weekend’s Motul SportsCar Endurance Grand Prix at Road America will be a “turning point” for his season in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

While BMW M Team WRT is riding high in the FIA World Endurance Championship, on the heels of two victories in the last three races and amid the fight for the Hypercar drivers’ and manufacturers’ titles, Vanthoor and his IMSA co-driver Sheldon van der Linde have yet to re-visit the GTP podium since their third place finish in January’s season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona.

The duo, who also compete full-time in the WEC, currently sit eighth in the GTP points standings with three races to go, although Vanthoor is coming off his breakthrough first WEC Hypercar win in the recent 6 Hours of Sao Paulo.

While their sister car of Philipp Eng and Marco Wittmann have scored consecutive podiums at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and Detroit, they too, have yet to visit victory in in WeatherTech Championship competition.

“We’ve been having good and bad weekends throughout the [IMSA] season so far this year,” said Vanthoor.

“I think Road America, hopefully looking into last year, can maybe bring us some luck and the turning point maybe in the season for us.’

Vanthoor and then co-driver Eng took top honors at the four-mile Wisconsin circuit in 2025, in what came as BMW’s only top-class victory that year across both championships.

It came after the BMW M Hybrid V8’s maiden win in global competition at the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen in 2023, followed by Eng and Wittmann leading a 1-2 finish at the Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2024.

All three races, incidentally, came in the second half of the GTP seasons.

“I do think that the last couple of rounds suit our car more,” said Vanthoor. “Looking into this year, obviously, this will be something new again, considering we have an evo package.

“Going into those races will be a bit unknown if it will still be the case.

“We’re going to see race-by-race, and it’s difficult to say now if it will be the same as compared to a couple of years ago.

“But obviously you’re going to try our best anyway to come back or to try and at least get somewhere more upfront in the championship.

“It’s hard to say if it will now be the same at the last couple of years. So, we’re going to have to wait and see.”

When asked if the recent success in the WEC, which sees teammates Rene Rast and Robin Frijns tied with Toyota drivers for the lead of the drivers’ world championship and BMW just five points behind the Japanese manufacturer, Vanthoor said he hopes it “fires [the IMSA team] up a bit more.”

He added: “I think in general, especially at WRT, we’re together; we are a team. That’s open and is very important.

“I think also with Andreas (Roos), as a group, we find that very important. I never think that they should be down or upset.

“There’s just more desire to have a good, good result.

“Obviously, there’s also a lot of interaction in between, so they are working well together.

“I think also the things what we’ve been having in life comes a lot from inside, the other way around as well.

“It’s really a group effort and it helps a lot to improve the car. I do think it fires them up more than letting there be tension of something else like that.”

WRT Still Getting Up to Speed in “Completely New” IMSA Program

Vanthoor acknowledged the Belgian squad’s U.S.-based operation, which was rapidly built up ahead of this season, having taken over from Team RLL, has been a monumental task that’s taken some time to come to grips with.

“It’s a completely new program for us,” he said. “It’s a lot of new people. A completely new structure.

“We’ve always been used to having our structure in Europe and now we have to do a completely different structure in the U.S., which is different.

“Also, the way of working, working with people. And this takes time.

“Obviously, I do think we’ve seen some signs of it (working), which is very positive, but we’ve also seen already some things which aren’t really positive, which we have to work on.

“But I think that’s also normal. You can’t expect to build up… they did it in four months, I think they built up the whole thing. I don’t think you can expect it to be working from the first race of the first race onwards.

“Good things take time, they always say. So hopefully in some more time it will get together.

“I do think we’ve got good people, and I do believe that it will get better and we will be able to fight for victories.

“We’ve had good races already this season where we showed good pace and good strategy from the guys.

“We just have to keep working and keep making sure to get all the little mistakes out of our system.”

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