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[h=2]Big BMW at COTA with Edwards[/h] Friday, 05 May 2017


By Marshall Pruett / Images by Pruett & IMSA

BMW's M6 GTLM is the only plus-size model in IMSA's manufacturer-rich factory GT class. Parked next to the knee-high Ford GTs and other GT Le Mans exotica, the big German sedans should, at first glance, have no business knocking those Fords, Corvette C7.Rs, Ferrari 488s, and mid-size Porsche 911 RSRs off pole position at Circuit of The Americas.

Luckily for BMW Team RLL, John Edwards doesn't pay attention to preconceived notions of how his twin-turbo V8-powered No. 24 entry should perform. The season hasn't been easy for the two-car team, but with his pole, the team has a stronger chance of earning its first win with the M6.
"It's been very tough this year; you see from the results we've struggled a little bit, and COTA is a challenging place because you have a mix of everything," the American told RACER moments after stepping out of the car. "Our strengths are in straightline speed and high-downforce corners, so the Esses reward us and the back straight is good for us, but we struggle in the hairpins."
Edwards' Michelin-shod machine has received an incredible amount of time and effort to extract more speed since it was introduced to GTLM last year. IMSA's rules prevent BMW and its partners at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing from changing anything they want on the cars to improve performance, which means they're left to make an endless array of small adjustments to the base chassis and aerodynamics.
"Once it's homologated, you can't change major suspension geometry, wheel sizes, and much else, so we're looking at fine tuning stuff so it could be one click of rear [anti-roll] bar to make it a little softer or stiffer to give platform stability," he said.
"This morning, we made a wing change that was very minor – one hole – and it transformed the handling of the entire car. Normally, we're talking about one hole being a very small amount, but at COTA, if you can affect the car by three-hundredths [of a second] in every corner, that's 20 corners...so that was a big difference for us."

In light of the low-speed advantages the smaller cars can exploit, Edwards says the BMW Team RLL engineers concentrated on making the slow corners less of a liability for the Nos. 24 and 25 M6s.

"The difference between this year and last year is we've made the car rotate better in the hairpins, so we've been able to bring ourselves up to our competition," he added.
Edwards recognized that earning pole is a small portion of completing the greater task at hand this weekend. Maintaining first place all the way through to the checkered flag will, in his estimation, be the true test of his skills.
"I think in the race, the smaller cars might have an easier time taking care of their tires, so it will be up to us to look after the [tire] degradation throughout the whole race," he said. "It's one thing to do it for one lap; it's different for the whole two hours and 40 minutes. We've begun to optimize the M6, but we still don't have a win with it yet so tomorrow's a good day to get it."