Racing News

    BMW’s ALMS title chase ends with a race left in the season

     

    Bill Auberlen and Jörg Müller finished fourth in the GT class at Virginia International Raceway in the BMW Team RLL M3, while their teammates, Dirk Müller and Jonathon Summerton, finished ninth. Corvette racers Tommy Milner and Oliver Gavin won the GT class in the four-hour American Le Mans Series enduro, winning the drivers’ championship and securing the team and manufacturers’ championships for Chevrolet with one race remaining in the 2012 season.
     

    Dirk Müller started M3 #56 second, while Bill Auberlen started car #55 seventh. Both cars had to take evasive action in a lap one, turn one incident. As a result, Müller fell back to tenth, while Auberlen moved up to fourth.

    Over the course of the race car #56 ran as high as second, while #55 was running third near the end of the race when a deflating tire forced a pit stop that dropped the car to fourth.

    M3 #56 was running second in class when it was hit by a prototype with just over an hour left in the race. Müller pitted to replace a broken wheel, and pitted again a lap later for suspension repairs. A bent toe link slowed him for the balance of the race; he soldiered on to finish ninth in class.

    Bill Auberlen said “It is so clear that we need straight line speed. The car was good, the team was good. We just don’t have the top speed. The longer the tracks, the more we are at a disadvantage.”

    The class win went to the Corvette of Gavin and Milner, with Jörg Bergmeister and Patrick Long second in their Flying Lizard Porsche and pole sitter Johannes van Overbeek and Scott Sharp third in their Extreme Speed Ferrari F458 Italia.

    The season ends with the 1,000 mile/ten hour Petit Le Mans race at Road Atlanta on October 20.—Brian S. Morgan