derBayerische November December 2022 - 13

T H E M I C H E L I N G T C H A L L E N G E A T V I R A U G U S T 2 6 - 2 8
power. As the factory-backed team drivers, John and Connor have direct
insight into car development and activities. They finished by having us watch
them practice driver changes.
Turner Motorsports, with legendary driver Bill Auberlen, has been a
favorite for many years. Bill and his co-driver, Robby Foley, along with the rest
of the team, are a great group of guys. Bill has won more IMSA races than
anyone else in history and he's not ready to stop. Will Turner has many years
of competition with BMWs and he has detailed insight into the GT program.
Turner races in both the WeatherTech
championship and the Michelin Pilot
Challenge, so they had races on both
Saturday and Sunday. Auberlen and
Foley both raced on Saturday; it
looked like Auberlen was about to
record another win, but didn't work
out. We had the benefit of discussing
the race with him. Turner and Paul
Miller are customer-based racing
programs. BMW builds the cars, and
the teams purchase and race them
with support from BMW Motorsport.
It used to be that the teams developed
the cars from street cars into race
capable machines. This was a very
expensive process and has been
replaced by customers purchasing complete race cars from BMW Motorsport.
The new group to the BMW family is Paul Miller Racing, with Brian Sellers and
Madison Snow doing the driving. The Paul Miller Auto Group includes a
BMW Dealership in Wayne, NJ. Paul Miller made the decision to move his
successful IMSA racing program from Lamborghini to the new M4 GT3. We
saw them at Sebring, where they were competitive, but they ran into problems
■ Paul Miller Racing M4 GT3 speeding through Hog Pen and on to a podium.
in traffic. Both Brian and Madison are very experienced. Brian Sellers told us
they are very impressed with the life of the P58 twin-turbo inline-six BMW
engines. As a customer, long engine life is very important. The team won the
championship with Lamborghini in 2021. Paul Miller Racing has shown their
ability to win in 2022, by coming through to win the IMSA 2022 Sprint Cup.
This was the first championship to be won by the M4 GT3. By starting the VIR
event, Paul Miller Racing won the Sprint Cup, a very special accomplishment.
The Michelin GT Challenge at VIR includes five races across the weekend.
There are two races that we are
most interested in. The feature race
taking place on Sunday (August 28)
is part of the WeatherTech
Championship and we also have
the Michelin Pilot Challenge
on Saturday. The Michelin GT
Challenge at VIR is a GT3-only race.
Cars included are the M4 GT3,
Porsche GT3R, Corvette C8.R GTD,
Mercedes-AMG GT3, Aston Martin
Vantage GT3, Acura NSX GT3,
Lamborghini Huracan GT3 and the
Lexus RC F GT3. Prototype cars are
not part of the field for this event.
These GT cars are split further into
two classes, GTD Pro and GTD.
The only difference between GTD Pro and GTD comes from the driver ratings.
GTD Pro includes FIA-rated Platinum level drivers with factory support while
the GTD drivers include a mix of Gold-and-below rated drivers. The cars
provided to these teams and drivers are identical. IMSA regulates the performance
of the cars using a Balance of Performance (BoP) methodology. We've
got some very different cars in this event. For them to race together in a
■ (From the Left) Mike Renner checks Adrienne Liu's Track Meet winning raffle ticket. Adrienne Liu, Track Meet Winner.
November I December
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derBayerische November December 2022

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