Vosse Laments BMW’s “Very Disappointing” Le Mans Showing

Team WRT boss Vincent Vosse labeled BMW’s showing in the 93rd running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans as “very disappointing” after all four of the brand’s cars encountered various problems and setbacks throughout the course of the race that stopped the brand from achieving a strong result.

Neither the pair of BMW M Hybrid V8s nor the two BMW M4 GT3 EVOs made it through the French endurance classic unscathed, with Robin Frijns, Rene Rast and Sheldon van der Linde recording WRT’s highest finish.

The No. 20 car initially finished 18th, which later became 17th following the disqualification of the No. 50 Ferrari 499P.

The two Hypercar entries ran inside the top ten late on when they were pushed into the garage virtually simultaneously with unrelated problems, which left BMW without points to score towards the manufacturers’ standings.

Vosse stated that the brand could have achieved ‘best of the rest’ status behind the three Ferraris and the No. 6 Porsche 963 had it not been for the late setback, noting that “everything behind the Ferrari” was “reachable.”

“For Hypercar, we had an issue, an engine issue on car No. 20 and on car No. 15 we had a battery cooling issue,” said Vosse.

“We need to investigate more to know where it came from. As you saw, it was quite difficult to put back the car on track. We only did the last lap.

“It needs to be more properly analyzed. Unfortunately, it was looking okay-ish.

“We were fighting for somewhere behind car No. 6, which was a bit quicker for us, but we had our place somewhere around that car.

“We were in front of the two Toyotas and in front of the Cadillac but once we hit the issue, it’s a very disappointing result, weekend for us.

“You can imagine the amount of work which was put in it, not for the last few weeks but for the last few months since last year’s Le Mans.

“So of course we need to rethink a little bit, we need to review the analysis and to see where the problem came from.

“The car itself was going good. We had at some stage some very good pace. Of course, not to fight with the Ferrari, as you could see, but everything behind the Ferrari, I think, was reachable if we were doing a perfect race.”

BMW’s late Hypercar setback compounded what had already been a tough race for the brand, as both of its LMGT3 entries had capitulated overnight, most notably taking the No. 46 BMW M4 GT3 EVO out of the lead approaching halfway.

This occurred when the car encountered a complete shutdown when Kelvin van der Linde entered the Porsche Curves, with the resulting loss of power steering sending the South African into the gravel trap.

“We had an electrical issue with car No. 46 which seemed to come from the wiring loom,” Vosse explained.

“But it needs more investigation because the loom can be everything. Of course it was unsafe to send the car back on track because once you have this cut like Kelvin had, you are losing everything.

“So you enter into a corner, you are losing the power steering, you are losing the ABS, you are losing everything. So we decided that it was unsafe to send the drivers back on track with such an issue.”

Not much later, the No. 31 sister machine was also taken out of the race after an unexpected encounter with some local wildlife.

“We just [hit] a rabbit on the track,” said Vosse.

“We could not do much about it, of course. It just came like that. It destroyed the front of the car with the radiator and so on.

“The work was again something to put the car back on track in a proper way which we tried to do but it was too big and we decided to retire the car.”