ALMS: BMW prototypes qualify fifth and seventh
5 August 2000
Provisional Qualifying Friday Round 5, American Le Mans Series 4 August 2000, Bowmanville, Ont. Munich/Bowmanville. BMW works drivers JJ Lehto (FIN) and Jorg Muller (D) qualified fifth on the provisional grid for Sunday's American Le Mans Series globemegawheels.com Grand Prix at Mosport. Muller qualified the No. 42 BMW V12 LMR on the 2.459-mile Mosport International Raceway road course in one minute, 10.286 seconds. Teammates Bill Auberlen (USA) and Jean-Marc Gounon (F) are seventh on the provisional grid in the No. 43 BMW after Auberlen qualified in 1:11.112. BMW Team PTG driver Hans-J. Stuck (D) qualified fourth in the GT class in 1:22.758. BMW Motorsport team manager Charly Lamm: "We are quite satisfied that since we started to work here, we can dial the cars in better. In that respect, fifth and seventh position is okay at the moment. We have been able to give the cars more grip by working with the suspension set-up, and that is also our target for tomorrow, to continue to fine-tune and improve the cars for the Saturday practice and qualifying." JJ Lehto #42: "The track is better than before, quite a lot. But it still needs some resurfacing, it's very bumpy in a few places. Hopefully, that will be the next goal for them." Jorg Muller #42: "The car is reasonable, it's not that bad at the moment. But I'm not happy, I got blocked. I could have been a tenth [of a second] or two quicker, but not a lot. It's not as bad as it was last race. We have a little direction at the moment, so hopefully we'll get something sorted out." Bill Auberlen #43: "Learning how to attack our new tires here with confidence is a big deal, because the tires come and go so quickly. I think the challenge is going to be to have a car that really, really goes fast in the turns for two hours, 45 minutes, without all of a sudden finding out, now I've got an understeer, now I've got an oversteer. A lot of people have run a low amount of laps on a set of tires, and they're going to find out what it's like." Jean-Marc Gounon #43: "It's a very nice track, but here, even more than Sears Point, you need a very good set-up on the car to be quick. I think we have to again work a lot to achieve that. For the race, if we can find the set-up that allows us the same level of performance, we can hope for something. But until that time, we need to work a lot on the car to balance it." Hans-Joachim Stuck, #7, GT class: "Thanks to Don Panoz for keeping up his promises. He made a lot of changes to the pits and turn 5A and B. Thanks to him, we have a really great facility now for racing. If he keeps up his promises and does some other modifications year after year, we'll have a great race track."