BMW Team RLL finishes fourth and sixth at Mid-Ohio

BMW Team RLL registered fourth and sixth place finishes in the Acura Sports Car Challenge at Mid-Ohio (USA), the fourth round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. Tom Blomqvist (GBR) and Connor De Phillippi (USA) finished fourth in the #25 BMW M8 GTE, 4.374 seconds behind the winning Porsche and two positions ahead of their team-mates John Edwards (USA) and Jesse Krohn (FIN) in the #24 BMW M8 GTE.

After two days of inclement weather, bright sunshine meant each stint of the two-hour-and-forty-minute race was a sprint on dry Michelin tyres. Krohn, starting the #24 BMW M8 GTE, and De Phillippi, starting the #25 BMW M8 GTE raced in third and fifth GTLM class positions through the first 30 minutes of the race.

During the exciting final 60 minutes, Blomqvist was battling with the #911 Porsche for the last step on the podium, only to lose the position in the closing laps. Edwards ran as high as fifth, but ultimately finished sixth.

Brandon Fry ( Technical Director BMW Team RLL): “Little bit of a tough day. Congrats to Porsche. Outside of that, it was a pretty close battle with the rest of the field. We just didn’t get the best out of today but all of our guys pushed hard until the end. We look forward to Watkins Glen and to having a big race there. We have a couple of tests coming up and we have a few more things to work on.”

Connor De Phillippi (#25 BMW M8 GTE, 4^th place): â€œCertainly we are moving forward. We knew we had a better race pace than we did in qualifying. We ran a mistake free race and did the best we could with what we had today. You have to keep learning and keep pushing ahead in these next few events. We are just missing a little bit next to the competition. We’ll look through the data post-race and try to be better at the next one.”

Tom Blomqvist (#25 BMW M8 GTE, 4^th place): “Being so close to the podium and missing out is always difficult. We were fighting for that last podium spot but just fell short. The team did a great job this weekend preparing the car. We will take the points and the learnings away and improve for the next race.” 

John Edwards (#24 BMW M8 GTE, 6^th place): â€œWe had a great car. Jesse did a great job and the team handled the pit stops perfectly. I lost about 20 seconds on the first corner of my out lap, when I slid off the track, an inexcusable mistake by me. Very disappointing when we had such a good car.”

Jesse Krohn (#24 BMW M8 GTE, 6^th place): â€œI got boxed in at the start and I lost a few positions. Everyone was defending very aggressively today so it was difficult to get those spots back. I think we had a good car and we can certainly learn on how to improve for the next race.”