Grid positions four and six for BMW Team RLL in the rain at Road Atlanta.

Road Atlanta (US), 2nd October 2015. 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.

Petit Le Mans will go green on Saturday at 11:10hrs local time. The weather forecast predicts difficult conditions with heavy rainfall. 

Bobby Rahal (Team Principal, BMW Team RLL):

“I was a pleased with Lucas’s qualifying, as he was quite close to the Porsches and kept it on the track. I think qualifying is important, but not to the point where you risk not making the race by damaging the car. Bill had some bad luck as he was on a much better lap, but there was a red just as he was about to go across the start/finish line and so that time was not accepted. But I was pretty pleased with the performance of both cars. Today is very wet and it is going to be a long arduous day tomorrow if it is going to be like this.” 

Lucas Luhr (No. 24 BMW Z4 GTLM, 4th place):

“We were planning on going more towards the end, so that hurt us a little bit now with a car going off, as I think our car had more potential. I am pretty happy with our car and our performance here in the wet. Tomorrow is going to be about staying out of trouble and that is not so easy. I am confident we have a good package for tomorrow.” 

Bill Auberlen (No. 25 BMW Z4 GTLM, 6th place):

“They were pretty sketchy and pretty bad conditions. It was very, very slippery going down the Esses, so it was just a matter of time before somebody was going to wreck, and I didn’t want it to be me. It is a ten-hour race and I went for the side of caution or I was going to do it over quite a number of laps, but then the session was red flagged when the number 912 had an accident. I think we are fine for the race.”