FROM THE ROAD TO THE TRACK: HOW ENDURANCE RACING IMPROVES BMW’S CUSTOMER CARS

The old adage “win on a Sunday, sell on a Monday” is still as relevant today as it was when it was first coined in the 1960s. To find out how BMW M’s endurance racing sets the tone for its road cars, we spoke to three drivers from Motul-backed BMW M team RLL who took the team to second in the GTD Pro category at last weekend’s IMSA Motul Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta.

Connor De Philippi: Endurance racing really is the test bed for the brand and for the road cars. A lot of the things that we learn here in the motorsport program translates to the road cars. We really race what we sell, and our job is, in a way, to try to break certain parts and improve them. And figure out how we can make them better. When we do find a way to make them better it usually translates to the road cars. We have a big responsibility here. Sometimes it's easy to forget about that because we're out here racing, but at the end of the day, the things that we develop directly impact what we sell and what the customers experience on the road. We all take that pretty seriously and it's always exciting to be a part of that process and try to contribute what we can as a driver to improve what we sell in the future.

John Edwards: Well, I think it's critical to show that your car can make the distance. Winning a 24-hour race like we did in in 2019 and 2020, and winning at Motul Petit Le Mans, like the team has done here with BMW M in the past as well, is a huge selling point for customers. It shows that your car is not only fast, but it's reliable. When you put the car through a 10-hour race that's like the equivalent of 50,000 miles on a street car. So being able to run flat out for that long, at the intensity that we put the cars through, is much harsher than normal street conditions. It’s the equivalent of running your street car for much longer than the easy 10 hours you would do on a road trip.

Jesse Krohn: Everything we learn here has an effect in some way on the production cars. This is the sort of test for cars that you can’t put them through on a normal road. This is a lot harder for all the parts, and the engine and the gearbox. If it can survive something like this, what we learn here we implement on the road cars, and that’s why there is racing from manufacturers because we learn a lot on track that we can transfer to production.

BMW M Team RLL uses Motul 300V as its official lubricant for endurance racing. Developed and tested on the track, it has taken countless teams to victory in its 50-year history and is designed to provide the perfect blend between performance and reliability on the race track… and the road.