BMW Team RLL's Z4s finished fourth and fifth in GTLM and Turner Motorsport's Z4 finished fourth in GTD in the Tudor United SportsCar Championship race at VIR on August 23.
John Edwards and Lucas Luhr, driving the Team RLL #24 Z4, finished fourth in GTLM, while Bill Auberlen and Dirk Werner finished fifth. The two Team RLL cars ran different strategies, with #24 doing four stops in order to get the maximum out of Michelin’s new “single stint” tires. Car #25 ran different Michelins and a more conventional three-stop strategy. The strategy paid off for car #24; #25 encountered two problems, a spin on Auberlen’s stint and an off-course-excursion on Werner’s, that set them back.
Once again the BMWs did not have the pace of the Porsches and Ferraris. Porsche’s Nick Tandy and Patrick Pilet took their third straight win, while their teammates Earl Bamber and Jörg Bergmeister finished second and Ferrari’s Pierre Kaffer and Giancarlo Fisichella finished third.
Team principal Bobby Rahal said, “Once again we beat the Corvettes and that is one thing we can be proud of. It is now the fourth race in a row Porsche has won, so they obviously have found something. It was a good race for Lucas and John, they had a different strategy, that paid off and they ended up with fourth. For the number 25 car we ran a different strategy, and it wasn’t quite as good. The car’s pace was actually not bad, but we just don’t have the pace of the Ferrari or the Porsche. Also the Corvette hasn’t had the pace of those two cars for the last couple of races. We did the best with what we had today.”
In GTD Michael Marsal started the #97 Turner Motorsport Z4 and handed off to Markus Palttala, who moved the car up to fifth in class. He moved up to fourth when Audi racer Christopher Haase, who had been running second, fell back when he had to stop after an off-course excursion to clear grass from the radiator. The GTD win went to Ferrari racers Townsend Bell and Bill Sweedler.
Just two races remain in this year’s TUSC series, including a 2 hour, 40 minute race at Circuit of the Americas on September 19 and the ten-hour Petit Le Mans finale at Road Atlanta on October 3.—Brian S. Morgan
