IMSA News: RLL BMW team locks out front row at Long Beach
Dries Vanthoor (pictured) and BMW M Team RLL earned the GTP and overall pole position for Saturday’s edition of the IMSA Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, the event’s 50th year.
Vanthoor and the No. 24 BMW M Hybrid V8 were also the fastest qualifier at the first two WeatherTech Championship races of the season – the Rolex 24 At Daytona and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.
Daytona International Speedway’s banked oval/road course hybrid, the bumpy Sebring airfield circuit, and the 1.968-mile Long Beach temporary street course have little in common, demonstrating the diversity of the WeatherTech Championship. Yet Vanthoor and the BMW have been the fastest combination over one lap everywhere IMSA has visited this year for his first three career poles.
The challenge for Vanthoor and his co-driver Philipp Eng – along with BMW M Team RLL drivers Sheldon van der Linde and Marco Wittmann, who qualified the No. 25 BMW on the outside front row – is to translate that single lap Friday speed into a Saturday race victory. Their best result this year is fourth place at the Rolex 24.
“Big thanks to the team and BMW for giving us a great car to start the weekend here,” said Vanthoor, whose posted a fast lap of 1:11.539 (99.034 mph) around the tight 11-corner Long Beach layout. “It’s the third time, but now I think it’s finally time to also finish it off. We didn’t capitalize yet and bring a victory home.
“It’s been fun, but I think a race win is going to be a little more rewarding.”
BMW ran first and second in both Friday practice sessions at Long Beach, with van der Linde in the No. 25 car fastest in the 60-minute opener before Vanthoor took over at the front in 90 minutes of warmer afternoon conditions.
In the 15-minute qualifying period, Vanthoor was 0.25 seconds faster than van der Linde, whose best time was clocked at 1:11.789.
Nick Tandy, in the championship points-leading No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 he shares with Felipe Nasr, was the only other driver to break 1:12 with a 1:11.989. Mathieu Jaminet, the 2023 Long Beach GTP race winner, locked up the second row for Porsche for Saturday’s 100-minute sprint by qualifying the No. 6 Porsche 963 – co-driven by Matt Campbell – fourth.
With two Acuras in fifth and sixth and two Cadillacs in seventh and eighth, it’s a two-by-two “Noah’s Ark” type of grid by manufacturers in the first eight of 11 spots.
But the key story Friday was BMW’s continued dominance of qualifying in 2025. BMW M Team RLL ended the 2024 season strongly with a 1-2 finish at the TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the penultimate round of the WeatherTech Championship season. Improvements to the cars electronic braking, a function of the hybrid power components used in the GTP class, have fueled BMW’s impressive recent single-lap speed.
Vanthoor is a veteran in the FIA World Endurance Championship but this is his first full season in IMSA. He’s a longtime BMW factory driver in GT-class competition who made the step up to prototype competition for BMW in WEC in 2024.
“I’ve always been reasonably okay adapting to new tracks and different circumstances, going back to my GT days,” Vanthoor remarked. “That’s something that helped me out here. Simulators help you get a feel for how the track is, the kind of flow you get with the braking and the gear shifts. But it’s not copy/paste, not a one-to-one comparison to real life.
“It’s all going in the right way, and it shows the car is fast, but now we want more,” he added. “We need to make sure we do a clean race – myself and as a team – and capitalize on those pole positions. You can be on pole position for every race, but if you don’t get the win, nobody is really going to be happy.”
Acura Shares Row 3 Ahead of Home Race Weekend
Nick Yelloly, who qualified fifth in the No. 93 Acura Meyer Shank Racing with Curb Agajanian Acura ARX-06, brushed the wall late in qualifying but did not significantly damage the car or bring out a red flag. Still, that car ended one spot higher than the sister No. 60 car in sixth, which lost its best qualifying time as a result of causing a red flag in the previous practice session.
Yelloly, along with fellow Acura Meyer Shank drivers Renger van der Zande, Colin Braun, and Tom Blomqvist, visited American Honda headquarters in nearby Torrance on Wednesday. They showed off the Acura ARX-06 prototype and signed autographs for several hours for Honda and Acura associates.
American Honda began selling motorcycles in 1959 from a former photo processing lab studio at 4077 W. Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles with eight employees; more than 2,000 associates now occupy the 101-acre campus in Torrance that opened in 1990. Honda Racing Corporation U.S. was established in 1993 in Santa Clarita. Acura has served as the title sponsor for the Long Beach Grand Prix since 2019.
The 100-minute IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race from Long Beach will be broadcast live on USA Network at 5 p.m. ET on Saturday, April 12. Coverage is also available domestically on Peacock and internationally on the official IMSA YouTube channel.
Vasser-Sullivan Lexus wins GTD pole
Vasser Sullivan Racing’s recent run of success at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach continued today when Parker Thompson planted the No. 12 Lexus RC F GT3 on the Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) pole for the third round of the 2025 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
The Vasser Sullivan squad boasts a back-to-back winning streak at Long Beach, with Ben Barnicoat and Parker Thompson having scored a win here in GTD last year after Jack Hawksworth and Barnicoat took the GTD PRO victory in 2023. It’s also the team’s third straight Long Beach pole in either GTD PRO or GTD; no IMSA GT team has done so at Long Beach since Corvette Racing did so from 2007 to 2009 in the former American Le Mans Series’ GT1 class.
It was Thompson’s turn to shine again today as he out-fought Jonny Edgar (No. 177 AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R) and Tom Gamble (No. 27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 EVO) by the thinnest of margins to earn the inside of the front row for tomorrow’s 100-minute race.
Thin margins? Consider that Thompson toured the 11-turn, 1.968-mile street circuit in 1 minute 17.877 seconds (90.974 mph), 0.06 of a second faster than Edgar and 0.062 quicker than Gamble. Manny Franco was fourth, just 0.291 of a second off, in the No. 34 Conquest Racing Ferrari 296 GT3.
Speaking of thin margins, all told seven drivers posted times within a half second of Thompson’s pole winning lap, although the seventh fastest qualifier – Robert Wickens – forfeited his fastest lap (1:18.239) as the result of causing a red flag in the afternoon practice session.
Wickens, making his first WeatherTech Championship start since 2017 and his GTD class debut in the No. 36 DXDT Racing Corvette Z06 GT3.R equipped with hand controls featuring the Bosch electronic braking system, had to rely on his second fastest lap of the session – a 1:18.411.
The penalty slots Wickens into eighth spot on the grid with the No. 57 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3, the No. 89 Vasser Sullivan Lexus and the No. 96 Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 EVO between the DXDT ‘Vette and Franco’s fourth placed Ferrari.