BMW Grabs a One-Two Finish in Long Beach

BMW is no stranger to success out at the sunny Long Beach Grand Prix track and the BMW Team RLL drivers have found their way to the Long Beach podium for five consecutive years in the ALMS series. The winning pattern continued this weekend as the team competed in only its second race with the new Z4 GTE cars, driven by Bill Auberlen and Maxime Martin in the Black No. 55 car and Joey Hand and Dirk Müller in the White No. 56 Z4 GTE. The No. 55 Z4 started fourth in the competitive GT class and had issues early on with a spin out but found their way back into the mix and battling right behind the No. 91 SRT Viper, piloted by Dominik Farnbacher and Marc Goossens, for most of the race. With 15 minutes left in the race the Frozen Black Z4 driven by Auberlen got the jump out of the corner and powered past the Viper to take the lead.

The White No. 56 car had worked its way from 7th into a strong 3rd place position by the time Müller jumped in to close the remaining gap on the 2nd place SRT Viper. With only a few minutes left the Viper had some issues and locked up the brakes to take a really wide turn and allowed Team RLL to take a 1-2 lead that it would hold until the checkered flag.

This marks the first 1-2 win for BMW Team RLL since the 12 Hours of Sebring in 2011 and the team was ecstatic to win this early out since switching from the BMW M3 GT cars to the Z4, owner Bobby Rehal commented to say “There is nothing like winning at Long Beach. Sebring is the big one, but Long Beach is not far behind in my book.”

Follow the BMW Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team here for more info all season: http://www.rahal.com/