Levanduski: BMW team to ride momentum at Glen Six Hours

• The BMW team was one of three teams testing at Watkins Glen International on Wednesday and Thursday
• Rahal/Letterman/Lanigan engineer Jay O’Connell splitting time at Glen sportscar test and Indy 500
• BMW’s featured throwback livery to honor the 40th anniversary of its first major success in America

WATKINS GLEN – BMW has its mojo back in U.S. sports car racing.

After testing its two GT Le Mans class Z4 GTE’s at Watkins Glen International on Wednesday and Thursday, the German automaker has its target set on next month’s Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen, where it hopes to hit another bull’s-eye.

The Rahal/Letterman/Lanigan team, which runs BMW Motorsport’s IMSA operation, won team titles in the American Le Mans Series in 2010 and 2011, as well as a driver championship in 2011 with Dirk Werner. However, in 2014’s debut season of the unified Tudor United SportsCar Championship, the team came up empty in the win column. BMW finished fourth in the manufacturers points standings and its drivers finished seventh and eighth.

The 2015 season has seen a turnaround for the Hilliard, Ohio-based team, which has scored two victories in the first four events. BMW holds a two-point edge over Chevrolet to lead the manufacturers standings heading into the next event at Watkins Glen. Its driver pairings are second and third in the point standings.

The team, co-owned by 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal, former television talk show host David Letterman and businessman Mike Lanigan, started off the year with a second-place finish at the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

After finishing fourth in the Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring, it has scored consecutive class victories in the most recent events at Long Beach, Calif., on April 18 and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca on May 3. Bill Auberlen and Werner won at Long Beach, and John Edwards and Lucas Luhr won at Laguna Seca.

“We’re coming off a really good streak and we hope to continue that run at Watkins Glen,” Auberlen, driver of the No. 25 BMW, said Wednesday at the Glen test. “The reason it’s happening is all of the hard work BMW does in the offseason.”

More specifically, the 46-year-old veteran racer from California said it was changes made to the car’s aerodynamics, coupled with a slight power boost from the 2015 rules package, that helped breathe new life into the team.

Auberlen also credits the execution by the Rahal Letterman Lanigan team, with its vast experience coming from its roots in IndyCar, with ultimately putting them in victory lane.

“The Rahal Letterman Lanigan team is amazing,” he said. “So, if all we had was the vehicle that could have the potential to win, those guys will make it happen and they have made it happen.”

Auberlen said he hopes Letterman, who retired from the CBS “Late Show” on Wednesday, can now find the time to attend one of their events.

“We would love for him to come to one of our races; he’s an integral part of the team,” he said.

Three teams and four cars took part in Wedneday’s test on a cool and breezy first day in preparation for the Glen season opener from June 26-28. Along with the BMW Team RLL cars were single entries from the Magnus Racing GT Daytona Porsche team and the Porsche factory-backed Core Autosport GT Le Mans team.

Auberlen said their team doesn’t test often but always makes a point to do so at Watkins Glen.

“It’s a longer race, it’s a tougher race and it’s a tricky track,” he said. “We are still working on the setup, making it better and better every race weekend, and that’s why we are here.”

Joining Auberlen at the test were car No. 24 teammates Edwards and Luhr. Werner, Auberlen’s German teammate, had other testing commitments with BMW in Europe and was not at The Glen.

The BMW RLL team sat on the Glen Six Hours class pole last year, but its cars could not keep that pace up in the race, finishing sixth and 10th.

“We had a car that could run fast on its own last year, but as soon as we got in traffic, we were stuck,” Auberlen said. “Now, we have a car that can compete with everybody else on their same terms. … So we are looking good.”

Auberlen said their test lap speeds around the Glen’s 3.4-mile layout were quickly under the GTLM pole speed of 117.597 mph set by his 2014 BMW teammate Andy Priaulx. Auberlen, who observed the rival Core Autosport team was also doing similar times under last year’s pole speed, said the competition in the GTLM class is “brutally competitve.” During an IMSA test at Watkins Glen last week, the Falken Tire/Walker Racing GTLM team was also faster than last year’s pole.

“Everybody is within a tenth or two of a second on a big, long track like this and it makes for very competitive and very hard racing,” he said.

Since the Sebring race in March, the BMW’s are featuring a throwback livery to honor the 40th anniversary of their first major success in North American racing, when the team won the 12 Hours race on the airport track in Florida. Their GTLM cars carry the distinctive blue, violet and red stripes that were on the 1975 winning 3.0 CSL.

“We’ve got good momentum going into The Glen,” said BMW Team RLL vice president of technology Jay O’Connell. “We were strong here last year, so hopefully we’ll do an even better job this time around.”

Double duty for RLL engineer

It has been a busy week for Rahal/Letterman/Lanigan technical director Jay O’Connell. He has been splitting his time between the team’s Verizon IndyCar and Tudor United SportsCar Championship operations.

On Sunday, he was helping Oriol Servia qualify for the Indianapolis 500 and on Wednesday the 1988 Cornell engineering graduate was at Watkins Glen for the team’s BMW GT Le Mans test session.

“I had just enough time to squeeze one day of this test in,” said O’Connell at Watkins Glen.

The Boston native flew back to Indianapolis early Thursday to prepare Servia’s car for the traditional “Carb Day” final practice at the Indy speedway on Friday.

“It’s a little double duty, but I look at it as cross training,” O’Connell said. “We are an IndyCar team that has gone sports car racing. … A lot of the guys here have got experience in Indy so it’s always good to keep going back and forth.”

Four members of the RLL sports car test crew will be working on Servia’s IndyCar on Sunday, including engineer Bruno Couprie, who will be in charge of Serbia’s race strategy. O’Connell said he’ll serve as the Spaniard’s race engineer and be on the radio with him during the race.

Servia starts 13th in the No. 32 Dallara/Honda.

Ron Levanduski is a sports writer. He can be reached by email at rlevanduski@stargazette.com and followed on Twitter @SGRLevanduski.