BMW’s new challenger disappoints in Daytona 24 Hours Qualifying
- Benjamin Crundwell
- 1 hour ago
- 4 min read
Last season, BMW were main contenders for the famous Daytona 24 Hours win, but damage near the end of the race spoiled their chances. 12 months on they have prepared to come back stronger, with a new version of the BMW M Hybrid V8.
The BMW M Team WRT will enter Saturday's race with two of their LMDh cars, the No.24 will be piloted by Sheldon van der Linde, Dries Vanthoor, Robin Frijns and René Rast, and the No.25 is to be raced by Philipp Eng, Marco Wittmann, Kevin Magnussen and Raffaele Marciello.
Despite extensive updates to the vehicles aerodynamics, the drivers were keen to downplay their performance, insisting there was still work to be done. Entering his second year racing for BMW, Kevin Magnussen said after the ROAR: “We are not yet where we need to be with the balance of the car if we want to fight for victory.”
Similarly, René Rast said: “At the moment, we are still lacking a bit of performance, so we need to make good use of the practice sessions next week to improve the balance of the car.”
Both drivers followed up by suggesting that pace could be found before Qualifying, which took place on Saturday. However, the two cars (qualified by Vanthoor and Wittmann) initially qualified 9th and 10th in the class of only 11 GTP cars - they were both a second off the pole time set by Jack Aitken.
Aitken later lost his pole time, promoting the BMWs to 8th and 9th respectively.
Vincent Vosse’s WRT team will be concerned with their lack of performance at a track they were so strong at last season.
Data collected from thousands of CFD (computational fluid dynamic) simulations and many hours in the wind tunnel suggest the car should have a reduction in lap time. Instead they have set a qualifying time a second slower than their 2025 pole time (which would have been good enough to take pole this year too) - why?
There are three main stages of testing a new aerodynamic package: CFD, wind tunnel and track testing. CAD (computer-aided design) software allows engineers, such as those in BMW, to create 3D models of new pieces for their car, and BMW will have produced plenty of these.
The strong majority of BMW’s CAD models will have then been put into a different software which derives the airflow surrounding the tested model, to output masses of data related to variables such as lift (downforce), drag and pressure to name a few. CFD also provides plots representing flow behaviour, such as the streamlines over the car.
BMW engineers analysed this data to iterate their design until they were satisfied they had maximised the performance of their car, by which point a physical model of the aero package was manufactured, and tested in the BMW Group’s AEROLAB wind tunnel in Munich.
Like the CFD, a wind tunnel will produce countless amounts of data for engineers to pour over, however this time more representative, as the tests have been conducted in real life, rather than on a computer.
When the engineers were satisfied with the wind tunnel data, they manufactured the new car and took it to the Circuit Paul Ricard. The primary purpose of this test was not to see how the car performs, but rather to see whether it matched the data from the wind tunnel and CFD.
When a race team conducts a real on track test, if the data matches what is expected, then the car will perform well; however if they experience unexpected results, then the team has a car which they don’t understand - and are unable to extract pace from.
BMW’s lack of pace so far in Daytona suggests the latter has happened, although it’s unlikely the situation is too bad, otherwise they would have reverted their upgrades to the 2025 iteration.
With more data being produced for every metre the car drives, and with feedback from each of the drivers, BMW will eventually iron out their issues. It is crucial for the team that they can do this before the race begins on Saturday, as the 24 hour race rewards higher than usual points.
During Thursday evening's practice session (after qualifying), the two BMWs finished 5th and 6th, indicating they may have already unlocked pace. The result must be taken with a pinch of salt though, as every car was conducting race runs, so the one lap pace is not as representative.
The silver lining for BMW and Team WRT is that Qualifying for the Daytona 24 Hours is the race where qualifying is least significant for the IMSA Sportscar Championship. There are multiple long straights overtaking opportunities across the 5.729km track, and there will be plenty of caution periods to keep the field bunched up.
At 18:40 GMT on Saturday, the No.24 BMW will start from 8th place, and the No.25 from 9th place for the Daytona 24 Hours. The full 24 hours can be streamed free from YouTube.
