All season long, the #24 BMW M Hybrid V8 had been close. Podiums accumulated. Wins didn’t. At Indianapolis on September 21, that changed.
Dries Vanthoor and Sheldon van der Linde won the ‘Battle on the Bricks,’ a two-hour, 40-minute round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, giving BMW M Team WRT its first overall victory in North America since taking over the BMW IMSA GTP program at the start of 2026. It was also van der Linde’s first IMSA win outright, and the fourth podium of what has otherwise been a frustrating debut season for the Belgian-South African pairing despite obvious pace.
The win arrived via van der Linde’s late overtake of the Corvette Racing entry of Earl Bamber with a few laps remaining. Vanthoor had qualified third; van der Linde absorbed early traffic trouble during his stint, kept the car clean, and executed when the gap appeared. The strategy held, and the #24 crossed first.
The arc of this season made the result feel overdue. The #24 car ran four consecutive podiums before finishing fourth at Watkins Glen when van der Linde and Vanthoor lost third place in the final ten minutes. At Road America, brake failure retired the race-leading #24 car entirely, one of the more painful retirements of the IMSA season. Indianapolis was the answer to both.
The sister #25 BMW M Hybrid V8, shared by Marco Wittmann and Philipp Eng, did not share in the good fortune. Wittmann made contact with an Aston Martin while attempting a pass, accepted a drive-through penalty, and the pair finished tenth in GTP. Wittmann took responsibility for the incident directly in his post-race comments, which is the appropriate thing to do and about as newsworthy as any honest self-assessment tends to be.
BMW M Team WRT is competing in its first IMSA season after establishing a new base near Charlotte, North Carolina. The program is built around the BMW M Hybrid V8, which debuted in the IMSA SportsCar Championship at the 2023 Daytona 24 Hours. That car’s first IMSA victory came under BMW M Team RLL, and the M Hybrid V8 had previously won at Indianapolis two years earlier with Philipp Eng and Jesse Krohn. Vanthoor himself had won at Road America in 2025 alongside Eng under that prior operation. The Indianapolis result is the first for WRT specifically, a distinction the team has been chasing since the program transferred.
In GTD, Turner Motorsport had its own moment. Robby Foley and Patrick Gallagher won the #96 BMW M4 GT3 EVO to give the team its first class victory in more than two years. Foley built a small lead after a restart and held it to the finish. The result put the duo atop the GTD overall standings with the season finale at Road Atlanta two weeks out.
Paul Miller Racing had a rougher afternoon. Neil Verhagen and Connor De Phillippi ran in GTD PRO podium contention in the #1 BMW M4 GT3 EVO through most of the race before being collected by multiple rivals in the closing stages and ultimately forced off the circuit. They finished sixth and lost the GTD PRO points lead as a result, though the margin to the finale remains workable.
Road Atlanta hosts the Petit Le Mans season finale in two weeks, with both Turner Motorsport and Paul Miller Racing entering with title shots. For BMW M Team WRT, the question is whether the Indianapolis breakthrough translates into a strong final result or simply closes the book on a season that promised more than it delivered for most of its length. Given what the #24 showed all year, a strong finish seems more likely than not.
Source: BMW. Images courtesy of BMW.
