WEC: Rast Believes BMW Can Learn from Porsche’s Qatar Victory, but More Work Needed
As the FIA WEC 2023 season gets underway, triple DTM champion Rene Rast has expressed his optimism about BMW’s chances in the championship, citing the impressive victory of Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre, and Andre Lotterer for Porsche Penske Motorsport in the Qatar 1812km season-opener. Rast believes that this achievement gives BMW “hope” in their inaugural WEC programme with the M Hybrid V8 run by WRT.
However, he also stressed that BMW still has work to do, considering their best result of 10th at the Losail International Circuit, which was promoted into the points after Cadillac’s disqualification. When asked about the impact of Porsche’s victory on the BMW camp, Rast told Motorsport.com, >”It definitely gives hope because you can see that the LMDh car actually can fight for overall victory, we are the same car category more or less, so the potential is there.”
Rast attributed BMW’s current performance gap to their limited testing programme due to unfavorable weather conditions last year. >”Our test programme in the winter or last year for this season was a bit compromised due to a lot of weather. I’m not saying that this is the reason, but we were not very lucky with the weather conditions and didn’test didn’t do a lot of dry running.”
BMW Motorsport boss Andreas Roos echoed Rast’s sentiments, urging caution on the Bavarian marque’s first WEC programme since the M8 GTE contested the GTE Pro class in the 2018-19 ‘superseason’ with the MTEK squad. Roos pointed out the operational differences between IMSA and the WEC, emphasizing the need “to be realistic” about BMW’s expectations.
“We have all the ingredients that we need,” Roos said. “But whether we can extract everything from those ingredients, that is the question. We still have a lot of work to do, we are not where we want to be.”
WRT boss Vincent Vosse expressed optimism that the team is “going in the right direction” following its graduation as champion of the LMP2 category that was dropped from the championship this year. Vosse drew parallels with Penske’s struggles in the early stages of the 2023 season, highlighting that it takes time for a team to find its footing.
With the WEC 2023 calendar promising an exciting season ahead, BMW’s progress will be closely watched as they strive to close the gap with the dominant Porsche Penske Motorsport. As the team continues to refine their M Hybrid V8, fans can expect a thrilling battle for supremacy in the top-tier endurance racing championship.
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