ALMS: BMW M3s in top-10 during provisional qualifying
9 October 1999
BMW Team PTG notes: provisional qualifying, Oct. 8 VISA Sports Car Championships, Laguna Seca Raceway race seven, American Le Mans Series BMW M3s are fourth, fifth and eighth on the provisional GT starting grid for Sunday's American Le Mans Series race at Laguna Seca. Peter Cunningham was fastest of the BMW Team PTG drivers, posting a time of one minute 29.371 seconds on the 2.238-mile road course at a speed of 90.150 miles per hour in the #10 BMW M3. Hans Stuck was right behind him in fifth place in the #6 M3 with a time of 1:29.485 (90.035 mph). Mark Simo was eighth in class in 1:30.247 (89.274 mph). Hans Stuck, driver, #6 BMW M3 "The setup now gets close. There was some traffic, but I'm happy with what I've done. This is one of my favorite tracks and I'm happy to be here. It's a track that is very demanding: You have to be very careful here. If you push the car, you're slow. You've got to be always half a per cent under 100 per cent. That's the fastest way, but it's very difficult. For the race on Sunday, traffic will be a big, big issue because there's hardly any straights here." Peter Cunningham, driver, #10 BMW M3 "We're very happy to have our car working like it is. The M3 worked really well, even on the tires that we were on, which were the harder of our two compound choices. We're going to play with another compound tomorrow in practice, and we'll make a determination if we want to try that for qualifying tomorrow. In any case, we're qualified in the field on the harder compound tire, in a good position, and I think these tires are going to do well in the race." Mark Simo, driver, #7 BMW M3 "We were more than a second quicker in qualifying than we were in practice. We need to gain another second, so we'll try some more things and hopefully by tomorrow we'll have it. The track was clean and nice, everything about it was good." versatile view BMW Team PTG driver Boris Said will drive three types of race vehicles for four different teams this month. This weekend is dedicated to sports-car racing in the BMW M3. He'll race a truck in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series at Texas Motor Speedway next Friday, then jump on a Lear jet to Sebring (Fla.) International Raceway, where he'll drive as a team-mate to occasional BMW Team PTG driver Brian Simo in an SCCA Trans-Am performance car. He'll wrap up the month in a truck for Irvan-Simo Racing at California Speedway in Fontana, Calif.