Racing News

The BMW Team RLL Z4s dominated the GTLM class in the Tudor United SportsCar Championship race at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

John Edwards and Lucas Luhr won in Z4 #24, finishing over 20 seconds ahead of their teammates Bill Auberlen and Dirk Werner in #25. Auberlen and Werner, in turn, finished over nine seconds ahead of the third place car, the #911 Porsche driven by Michael Christensen and Patrick Pilet. Werner started from the pole, becoming the fifteenth different GTLM driver to do so in fifteen races.

Team principal Bobby Rahal said, "It was a good day. I think what made the big difference early on was John had a great restart and got ahead. He was able to use traffic and really got a good gap to the field because of that. Then he just maintained that. Bill and Dirk did a great job coming through. Good pit stops – and I think our stops were better than everybody else’s today and that gave us some breathing room. The car was very reliable, as always."

Patrick Lindsey and Spencer Pumpelly won the GTD class in a Porsche 911 GT America. The Turner Motorsport GTD class Z4 driven by Michael Marsal and Markus Palttala was classified tenth in class after it was taken out by another car very late in the race.

The GTD class runs again with the prototype classes on Belle Isle in Detroit on May 30, while the GTLM cars do not race again until June 28 in the six-hour race at Watkins Glen on June 28, when all four of the series’ classes take to the track.—Brian S. Morgan