BMW’s Rast, Frijns Didn’t Expect to Be Points Leaders at Le Mans

Photo: Andrea Lorenzina/DPPI

BMW M Team WRT drivers Rene Rast and Robin Frijns said they didn’t expect to be leading the FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar drivers’ championship entering the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The duo in the No. 20 BMW M Hybrid V8, who along with Sheldon van der Linde, are coming off a breakthrough first top class win for the German manufacturer in last month’s 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, in what came as a 1-2 finish for the Belgian-run squad on home soil.

“There’s lots of confidence,” Rast told Sportscar365. “Obviously it’s nice to come here with a win in the pocket; it’s our first win of the [WEC] project, but Le Mans is a different race.

“It’s way longer. We hope we can deliver something similar like we did in Spa.”

When asked if he expected to be entering the biggest race of the year at the top of the points, Rast admitted they didn’t expect to be hitting their targets so early into the campaign.

“We obviously have some certain targets for the project within the season but we were fulfilling those targets already, like winning a race, leading the championship, all these things, we didn’t expect before the season to come that early,” he said.

“It’s nice, we just need to follow up and keep going.”

Frijns, however, stressed the importance of putting full focus on the double points-paying Le Mans round, a race that the team has shown previous pace at but faced issues in its two previous Hypercar attempts.

“It’s nice to travel to Le Mans as the championship leader marker on the back of your car,” he said. “But at the end of the day, we lost Qatar, so we only had two races instead of three.

“But we had a good start in Imola. We finished fifth there and we had a very strong one at Spa. Everything looks pretty decent.

“I think two years ago we also had a good start but we had some issues at the end of the year. It looks like we’ve solved these issues now.

“Generally we’re more sorted than the last two years. We’re more confident than last year, even though last year we were fighting with the Toyotas, until we hit issues into the night.

“We were P5, P6, fighting for those positions. Obviously Ferrari was in a league of their own.

“If we can be a step forward, hopefully we can fight for that podium.”

Rast added that a number of elements have to come together in order to achieve success in the French endurance classic.

“The key in Le Mans is always pace,” he said. “But also you need… I don’t want to say luck, but Le Mans comes to you.

“No penalties, no incidents, no technical issues. Lots of things have to come into play.

“I think for us, the most important thing is just to try to keep it clean, and then in the end, we’ll see where we are.

“But our goal is to finish the race first of all and hopefully in a best position as possible.”

When asked about M Hybrid V8’s aero updates for this year, the German driver shared similar sentiments to co-driver Sheldon van der Linde in that it should produce strong results on the 8.5-mile Circuit de la Sarthe.

“Every manufacturer builds its car for this race, as did we,” said Rast. “We got an update on the aero side, and obviously we faced some difficulties on other tracks, but hopefully in Le Mans, we will have some strengths.

“That’s the key of development; that you put the car for those [key] races, in the best window. We hope that we are in a good position.”

Stephen Lickorish contributed to this report

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