This weekend, IMSA will kick off the 2016 racing season with the Roar Before The 24 at Daytona International Speedway. Although it's not a race, the Roar is an important test weekend for all of the sports-car teams in both the WeatherTech Championship and the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge series.
The Roar test sessions will be the debut of the new BMW Motorsport M6 GTLM and GT3 race cars plus some new competitors, like the highly anticipated Ford GT. There are 54 cars currently signed up to participate in the three-day test which will be open to the public.
“We are extremely proud of this entry list for the Roar Before The Rolex 24, which foreshadows the entries for the Rolex 24 At Daytona later this month,” said IMSA CEO Ed Bennett. “These entries represent a great balance of quality and quantity across all four of our classes and will make for fantastic racing when we kick off the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship on Jan. 30-31. We are pleased to welcome so many world class drivers, teams and manufacturer brands back to Daytona.”
Last year Turner Motorsport campaigned a Z4 in the GTD class, while this year they will have two new M6 GT3s. Their #97 will feature last year's pairing of Michael Marsal and Markus Palttala who will be joined by BMW DTM driver Maxime Martin and Jesse Krohn. The second car, #96, will be piloted by Bret Curtis, who drove Turner's Z4 GT3 in the Pirelli World Challenge last year, Jens Klingmann, DTM Champion Marco Wittman, and our own Ashley Freiberg.
BMW Motorsport will continue with the same line-up of drivers as they did last season with the #25 consisting of Bill Auberlen and Dirk Werner who just narrowly missed out on the Driver's Championship last year. They will team up with Augusto Farfus and DTM Champion Bruno Spengler. This team will be on a mission, as last year they lost to the #3 Corvette by a mere 0.478 seconds!
The #24 car, which will be driven by John Edwards and Lucas Luhr, will apparently be sporting the #100 this season in celebration of BMW's centennial. They will be joined by Indycar star Graham Rahal and Kuno Wittmer, the 2014 IMSA GTLM Driver's Champion who joins the BMW family this year.
We're excited for the 2016 season to get started and can't wait for the BMW CCA Car Corral at the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona!—Nate Risch
