BMW says it was an innocent party after the title-contending car’s bid for a strong result in the Fuji 6 Hours was wrecked by three separate incidents, including two with the #51 Ferrari 499P.
Robin Frijns and Rene Rast started the Japan round of the World Endurance Championship leading the standings in the #20 BMW M Hybrid V8, sharing the points lead with the #7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid of Nyck de Vries, Kamui Kobayashi and Mike Conway.
But the BMW duo, who share the car with Sheldon van der Linde, dropped to third in the standings after a wretched weekend that ended with a 13th place finish.
The #20 car was already on the back foot when qualifying was cancelled due to heavy rain, leading to the starting grid being decided by the fastest times in practice, where BMW had not completed a single push lap on low fuel.
Rast completed an epic opening stint from 17th and last on the grid to propel the car inside the top 10, only to drop back to 12th due to an ill-timed VSC.
More drama followed at the restart, with ASP Lexus driver Clemens Schmid pitching the former DTM star into a spin at Turn 11. As Rast attempted to recover back to the front, he was involved in a collision with the #51 Ferrari 499P of James Calado, leaving the BMW with a punctured tyre and a broken rear wing.
Any hopes of a recovery were then ended with another collision with the #51 Ferrari, with van der Linde getting sandwiched between Calado’s team-mate Alessandro Pier Guidi and a Porsche GT car and suffering another puncture.
The stewards penalised Schmid and Pier Guidi for their respective contacts with the #20 BMW, while the contact between Calado and Rast was adjudged as a racing incident due to the involvement of a McLaren LMGT3 car.
BMW motorsport boss Andreas Roos admitted to disappointment with how the #20 car’s race was wrecked due to factors outside the team or the drivers’ control.
“For the 20, unfortunately, I’m very sorry because they were involved in an accident two times,” Roos told the media including Motorsport.com. “It was not their fault but one time we had to repair it and two times we had a puncture.
“In the end they had no chance. We also tried to keep the car in the game and maybe get back into the lead lap, but we would have needed another safety car and then maybe we would have brought them back, but that’s how it is.”
Roos stopped short of directly blaming BMW’s rivals, but admitted the impact of the incidents was difficult to accept.
“It was definitely not the fault of our guys,” he said. “At the end, it’s close racing, it can happen. But, for sure, when you are the one suffering at the end with a puncture or with a rear end that you have to repair and lose the lap and lose the position, you can’t be happy about it.
“But you see how hard and tough the racing is. To be somewhere in the front, you need a clean race. This we didn’t have with the 20 but I would say it was not really our fault.”
Rast’s early pace and fuel-saving in the first stint suggested that the #20 BMW had the pace to contend at the front. However, after the early race drama in hour two, it never appeared to be a points contender.
“We were forcing our way to get our lap back, so you’re doing very aggressive strategy goals in the sense of saving a lot of fuel or doing something off-strategy,” explained Frijns.
“So, it’s quite difficult to say how the car was because we were not particularly focusing on your pace. But nevertheless, I think everything was working pretty well, fine. I think we had a faultless race. Looking at where the sister finished, finishing obviously on the podium with some luck perhaps. I think we could be up there as well.”
Fuji marked the second consecutive non-score for the #20 BMW, leaving Rast and Frijns 24 points behind the race-winning #8 Toyota of Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa. The #7 Toyota has now moved four points clear of the #20 BMW in second.
Asked about the points he and Rast lost to the two Toyota crews, Frijns said: “It’s shit, we can’t change it. There’s two more races to go, there’s 50 points on the table. And we are 24 behind and Toyota is a team that is always competitive wherever we go.
“So it’s going to be a difficult job to do. But we try to make the best out of it.”
While the #20 BMW suffered a race to forget, the team’s #15 car crewed by Kevin Magnussen, Raffaele Marciello and Dries Vanthoor finished third after replicating the same strategy adopted by the race-winning #8 car.
We want your opinion!
What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?
– The Motorsport.com Team
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: motorsport.com
