Woodcliff Lake, N.J. – Sept. 16, 2023 . . . Tomorrow’s TireRack.com Battle On The Bricks race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway will see the BMW M Team RLL M Hybrid V8 racing cars start from the sixth and seventh GTP class positions. Philipp Eng qualified the No. 24 BMW M Hybrid V8 in the sixth starting position with a 1:14.170-minute lap around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s 2.439-mile, 14-turn road course. Eng will co-drive with Augusto Farfus. Only 0.003 seconds behind his teammate, Nick Yelloly qualified the No. 25 BMW M Hybrid V8 in the seventh starting spot. He will co-drive with Connor De Phillippi. Both BMWs qualified within one-half second of the pole winning Porsche 963 and the entire 10-car GTP field set times within one second of the pole. The two-hour-and-forty-minute race, the first IMSA event at the Speedway since 2014, is the penultimate round of the 2023 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
Yesterdays’ practice session saw the two BMW M Hybrid V8 cars finish the in the fourth (No. 25, De Phillippi, 1:15.629) and fifth (No. 24, Eng, 1:15.702) positions. This morning’s practice ended with Eng third (1:14.550) and Yelloly fourth (1:14.562), both BMWs less than one-half second behind the class leader.
So far this year the team has scored a win (Watkins Glen), two runner-up finishes (Sebring and Long Beach), and a third-place finish (CTMP) with the No. 25 car of Connor De Phillippi and Nick Yelloly (co-driven at Sebring with Sheldon van der Linde.) De Phillippi and Yelloly stand third in GTP driver point standings. Augusto Farfus and Philipp Eng stand eighth in driver points, with a season’s-best fourth-place finish (Long Beach) in the No. 24 car.
Philipp Eng, driver No. 24 BMW M Hybrid V8 (P6): “This is my first time racing at Indy and it has been very exciting. Qualifying was tight. It is crazy that Nick and I are within three-thousands of a second. A tenth-of-a-second faster would have been a top-five spot. The car behaved well, and I am optimistic for a good result tomorrow. That will be up to traffic management with all the other GTD, LMP3, and LMP2 cars on track. A large field is cool for the spectators, but very demanding for the drivers.”
Nick Yelloly, driver No. 25 BMW M Hybrid V8 (P7): “We maximized what we had today, but we were aiming for better than sixth and seventh. We didn’t have quite enough pace today, but we’ll see what we can find this evening with the engineers. For tomorrow’s race, it’s all about staying in the game and being clever with traffic.”
In the GT Daytona class, Madison Snow qualified the No. 1 Paul Miller Racing BMW M4 GT3 in a very familiar position – first. His 1:23.075-minute lap will lead the 17-car GTD field to the green tomorrow as Snow and co-driver Bryan Sellers, the GTD championship point leaders, look for the duo’s sixth victory of the season. Patrick Gallagher also had a good qualifying session, driving the No. 96 LIQUI-MOLY BMW, he will co-drive with Robby Foley from the third starting spot (1:23.657). Chandler Hull qualified the No. 97 McIntosh BMW M4 GT3 in the 11th position (1:24.264). He will co-drive with Bill Auberlen.
The two-hour-and-forty-minute TireRack.com Battle On The Bricks race will be televised live on NBC beginning at 1:00 p.m. ET on Sept. 17th.
BMW Group PressClub USA
