BMW M6 GT3s finished sixth, seventh, and eighth in the six hour qualifying race for the May 27–28 Nürburgring 24.
Alexander Sims, Philipp Eng, Maxime Martin and Marc Basseng finished sixth in the #99 Rowe Racing M6 GT3, Jens Klingmann, Jörg Müller, John Edwards, and Tom Onslow-Cole were seventh in the #19 Schubert Motorsport car, and António Félix da Costa and Alex Lynn were eighth in the #43 BMW Team Schnitzer car, decked out in the livery of Team Schnitzer’s 1989 Nürburgring 24 race winning E30 M3. The second Rowe and Schnitzer cars finished eleventh and twelfth respectively. The #99 Rowe car finished less than a minute behind the winning Audi R8 LMS driven by Mike Rockenfeller, Nicolas Moller Madsen and Dennis Busch.
The top five finishers in the race and the top ten finishers in the qualifying session that precedes it are guaranteed spots in the top 30 qualifying session for the 24-hour race. While the BMWs in the race just missed out on the guarantee, three BMWs made it by finishing in the top ten in qualifying. They were the third place Walkenhorst Motorsport #100, the #33 Falken Motorsports car, and the #42 Team Schnitzer car. The other BMWs will have a shot at the top 30 session on race weekend.
The win in the M235i Racing Cup class went to Christopher Rink, Danny Brink, Philipp Leisen and Yannick Fübrich in a Pixum Adrenalin car. Bimmerworld’s James Clay, who will run the 24 hour race this year, co-drove the fourth-place car in the class.
The new M4 GT4 customer car used the race as a test session; driving chores were shared by BMW Motorsport Junior Ricky Collard, Dirk Adorf, and Jörg Weidinger.
Rowe #99 driver Alexander Sims (also Bill Auberlen’s co-driver in the #25 IMSA Team RLL M6 GTLM), said, “Sixth place is a solid result. Of course, we would have liked to have secured the starting place for the top 30 qualifying here already, but now we have to do that in four weeks. I would think that we will be OK to do it. We learned a few things during the race that will help us with the 24-hour race. The tires seemed to start working a bit better during the race, which was the main difference to qualifying and why our racing speed was better. All in all, I am satisfied with the qualification race.”—Brian S. Morgan
