The countdown to the nail-biting finale of the 2015 United SportsCar Championship (USCC) at Road Atlanta (US) is on. In qualifying for the final race of the season, the classic Petit Le Mans, BMW Team RLL secured promising grid positions. In difficult conditions with heavy rain and a wet track, Lucas Luhr (DE) qualified fourth at the wheel of the number 24 BMW Z4 GTLM. The German clocked a personal best time of 1:31.763 minutes and was 1.689 seconds slower than Porsche’s Earl Bamber (NZ) on the GTLM pole position. In Saturday’s race Luhr will share driving duties with John Edwards (US) and Jens Klingmann (DE).
The second BMW Z4 GTLM, driven by Bill Auberlen (US), recorded a lap time of 1:33.680 minutes in the 15-minute qualifying session, finishing sixth in the GTLM category. In the ten-hour race Auberlen will alternate at the wheel of car number 25 with Dirk Werner (DE) and Augusto Farfus (BR). Following an accident involving Bamber, the session had to be red-flagged. The 2015 Petit Le Mans will be the deciding event in the fight for the United SportsCar Championship GTLM titles. Werner and Auberlen are trailing championship leader, Patrick Pilet (FR, Porsche), by just three points in the drivers’ standings. The same points gap separates BMW from the leaders in the team and manufacturers’ classifications.
After the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge race on Saturday, BMW fans already had reason to celebrate at Road Atlanta: Ashley Freiberg (US) and BMW Motorsport Junior Trent Hindman (US) claimed their first victory of the season in the number 46 Fall-Line Motorsports BMW M3. After 77 action-packed laps and several yellows on a wet track, Hindman crossed the line with a 1.194-second lead over the second-placed car.
