BMW claimed three of the six driver slots in IMSA’s fourth Hall of Fame class, with Bill Auberlen, Brian Redman, and Hans-Joachim Stuck officially inducted during the WeatherTech Night of Champions following the Motul Petit Le Mans season finale at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
The most statistically dominant of the three is Auberlen, who leaves no room for argument: 65 class victories from more than 450 career starts between 1987 and 2023, a record in IMSA championship-level competition that may stand for a generation. Those victories came at 24 different circuits, including two at the Rolex 24 At Daytona, four at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, three at Petit Le Mans, and four at the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen. Add three IMSA championships and the career arithmetic is straightforward. He began that run in a BMW M3 E36 31 years ago. “Who would have thought that I would drive all these amazing race cars in all these championships?” he said at the ceremony.
Redman’s case rests on a different kind of significance. His 12 class victories and 1981 IMSA GTX championship are impressive on their own, but the lasting contribution is what he did in the BMW 3.0 CSL during BMW’s push into North American endurance racing. Two wins at Daytona and two at Sebring gave BMW its early credibility in the series, and the 3.0 CSL became one of the most recognizable race cars in the brand’s history because of what Redman and his contemporaries accomplished in it.
Stuck’s resume is the most eclectic. His IMSA record shows 22 class victories and 43 podiums from 91 races between 1975 and 2003, but those numbers sit alongside wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Nürburgring, and the 1985 World Sportscar Championship. Across nearly three decades of competition, he drove a wide range of BMW machinery and became one of the more visible ambassadors for the brand’s racing program globally.
The induction comes at an active moment for BMW in IMSA. The BMW M Team WRT program claimed its first North American victory at Indianapolis earlier this season, a breakthrough that followed a string of near-misses including a race-leading retirement at Road America that cost the team a probable win. The Hall of Fame class honoring the brand’s foundational IMSA drivers landed in the same season BMW’s current GTP effort finally broke through.
Adam McGregor, BMW NA Motorsport and Customer Racing Manager, called the three inductees representatives of “the very best of motorsport: talent, determination, and an enduring passion for competition.” That is the customary language for an occasion like this, and it also happens to be accurate. Sixty-five victories across 36 years of IMSA competition does not require embellishment.
The three careers together span essentially the entire history of organized sports car racing in North America, from Redman’s 3.0 CSL era through Stuck’s multi-decade run to Auberlen’s record-setting stretch that ended only three years ago. Petit Le Mans was the right place to close the book on that arc.
Source: BMW. Images courtesy of BMW.
