BMW M Team WRT had the Road America six-hour in its hands. Then both cars broke.
Sheldon van der Linde qualified third on Saturday and took the lead at Road America after the first round of pit stops, handing the #24 BMW M Hybrid V8 to Dries Vanthoor still out front. The team looked positioned for what would have been its first win of the 2026 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season. Instead, a restart incident cost them positions, and then brake problems made the decision simple: park it. Vanthoor was philosophical about the call. “On this fast track, it would have been too dangerous to continue with brake problems,” he said after climbing out.
The sister #25 car of Marco Wittmann and Philipp Eng never had as clean a day. A difficult qualifying session put them deep in the field, and although a bold strategy worked them toward the front, cooling problems had been building throughout. The team eventually pulled Eng in for repairs, losing two laps in the process. Seventh place was the result. “We could have at least fought for a podium,” Eng said. “It’s a real shame.”
In the GTD PRO class, the #1 BMW M4 GT3 EVO of Paul Miller Racing had its own misfortune. Connor De Phillippi and Neil Verhagen slid into the tire barriers and needed extensive repairs, finishing eleventh. Turner Motorsport was the lone BMW bright spot: Robby Foley, Patrick Gallagher, and Francis Selldorff brought the #96 BMW M4 GT3 EVO home fifth in GTD.
The #24 car ran a special Spider-Man: Brand New Day livery for Road America, a marketing collaboration that generated plenty of attention in the paddock. The car looked fast. It was fast. It just did not finish.
BMW M Motorsport head Andreas Roos framed the result the way everyone in the garage felt it. “Our disappointment is huge,” he said. “It’s even more bitter when you’ve shown such strong pace all weekend and had a good chance to fight for victory.” Roos noted that the BMW M Hybrid V8 has been reliable through most of the season, which makes the double-DNF-adjacent result at Road America harder to absorb rather than easier. When a car has earned a reliability reputation, two mechanical failures in the same race demand answers, not shrugs.
The BMW M Hybrid V8 represents the marque’s first serious return to top-flight sports prototype competition since the BMW V12 LMR won Le Mans in 1999. That history adds weight to a season that has produced strong pace and frustrating results in roughly equal measure. Earlier in 2026 at Indianapolis, Wittmann and van der Linde charged from seventh on the grid to second in the #25 car, a result that showed what the package can do when it stays together. Road America showed the other side of that equation.
Two races remain in the 2026 IMSA season, with Indianapolis next on the calendar. Team principal Vincent Vosse was direct about what comes next: “We will analyse exactly why that was and make another push for victory in Indianapolis.” Roos echoed it without softening the edge: “The whole crew deserves” a win.
They are not wrong. The question is whether the car will cooperate long enough to give them one.
Source: BMW. Images courtesy of BMW.
