The strategic gamble that ended BMW's WEC winless streak

BMW didn’t look like it was going to end its World Endurance Championship duck at Spa on Saturday. Not as the WRT team’s pair of M Hybrid V8 LMDhs sat on the grid on the fifth and sixth rows. But six hours later, Rene Rast, Sheldon van der Linde and Robin Frijns were celebrating a first world championship sportscar victory for the marque since 1981 at the head of a 1-2. What Rast described as a “miracle strategy” played its part, but so too did the pace of the Bimmer once WRT’s tactics got the car to the front of the field.

The winning BMW had qualified only 11th, one place behind the sister car shared by Kevin Magunssen, Raffaele Marciello and Dries Vanthoor. Rast had struggled through the early laps in his qualifying position and made it no higher than ninth before the first pitstop cycle began. It was at this point that WRT opted for a creative strategy: it short-fuelled the #20 car in the name of track position.

The BMW was on pit road for just 50s, while the cars ahead of it taking on a full fuel load spent nearly 20s longer between pit-in and pit-out. Rast emerged from the first round of stops in the lead, with a narrow advantage over Brendon Hartley. The #8 Toyota TR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar was also on an alternate strategy: it had been brought into the pits for its first stop after only 37 minutes.

The pace of the cars was, however, very different. Rast banged in a series of fastest race laps to pull away from the Toyota. BMW had the speed to exploit its gamble, whereas Toyota did not. The German edged away from the second-placed car through to their next pitstops an hour and a half into the race. A lead of just over a second had turned into nearly 10. When the BMW and the Toyota were back at the head of the field after the rest stopped for a second time, the gap between them had gone out to 15s.

BMW admitted to disappointment with its qualifying form around the 4.35-mile Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, as well as its long-run pace in free practice. That explained why it went into the race with the off-kilter strategy very much in its armoury as a plan B. It was Rast’s good fortune that he was the one struggling the most during the early stages of the race. Magnussen had made some progress up the field on the back of a strong start. That was why he didn’t get what he called the “golden ticket”.  

“It was on the table before the race, but the team was not sure if it would take the gamble, and it was a gamble,” said Rast. “But I got lucky. When they told me they were going to short fuel me, I went, ‘Yes.’”

A strategic gamble gave BMW its first world championship sportscar victory in 45 years

Photo by: Paul Foster

Rast already had an inkling that the M Hybrid V8 was a much more competitive proposition than it had been through practice and qualifying: “Running back in the traffic, I couldn’t go any faster, but when I lost a bit of time, I could close the gap really quickly. As soon as I came out of the pits with the light fuel load, I said to myself that this was our chance to shine. I gave it my all.”

Rast giving it his all added up to the fastest car on the race track. The same applied to van der Linde when he got in the car. “We had no idea before the race that we were going to be that competitive,” explained Rast. “It certainly didn’t look that way. But the practice sessions were colder; it was cloudy and there was no sun. Now, it was sunny and it was way hotter, and all of a sudden our car switched on.”

The winning BMW was the fastest car over the duration at Spa, and by some margin. It topped the averages, no matter how you cut the mustard. With a 25-lap sample, #20 had a gap of three tenths to the next best car. Extend that to 50 laps, and it was four tenths. Van der Linde just had the edge on Rast when you broke it down to the individual drivers.

“I wasn’t sure I could do it, but I thought I’d give it a go. I was lucky we didn’t have many track limit warnings when I jumped in the car. That made my life a bit easier" Kevin Magnussen

There was, however, still plenty of work to do for BMW after its tactical gamble through a race interrupted by four safety cars, as well as a single full course yellow. Two of the four safety cars fell in the final hour, which meant that Frijns had a pack of cars on his tail when the green flag flew each time. His good fortune was Magnussen’s presence right behind him. The second Bimmer acted as a rear gunner at a crucial moment of the race.

Magnussen, Marciello and Vanthoor didn’t have the pace of the sister car and without the gains offered by the alternate strategy looked on course to finish just inside or just outside the top six. A coming together between Vanthoor and James Calado in the #51 Ferrari 499P LMH at Les Combes late in hour four actually worked in their favour. The Belgian ducked into the pits straight away under the VSC at the start of the second safety car with two hours remaining, leaping up to third as a result. When the #8 Toyota got its strategy all wrong at the next caution period almost exactly an hour later, the BMW moved up to second.

It wasn’t obvious that BMW was going to win the race when the safety car ended with 34 minutes on the clock, nor after the one that followed ducked into the pitlane with 23 minutes left. Frijns had been given only fresh tyres on the hard-used righthand side of the car, while Magnussen had to make do with the set of Michelin mediums on which he had taken over the car from Vanthoor. 

Defensive work from Magnussen helped give the sister BMW the victory

Photo by: Paul Foster

Maintaining track position was the name of the game for BMW at this point. The following pack could, however, react to that. Antonio Fuoco, third in the queue aboard the #50 Ferrari, Kamui Kobayashi fourth aboard the #7 Toyota and the #35 Alpine A424 LMDh with Antonio Felix da Costa at the wheel in fifth all had the benefit of four new mediums. The car behind them, the Aston Martin Valkyrie LMH driven by Alex Riberas, was on four softs.

Magnussen proved equal to the task of holding off a very racey Fuoco, his rearguard action allowing Frijns to extend his lead to as much as six seconds at one point. “I wasn’t sure I could do it, but I thought I’d give it a go,” said the Dane. “I was lucky we didn’t have many track limit warnings when I jumped in the car. That made my life a bit easier.”

Magnussen was basically saying that he had a little leeway to extend what counted as race circuit and what didn’t in his efforts to keep the red car behind. He was just over half a second up on Fuoco when the chequered flag fell, with Frijns a further 1.9s up the road.

That Magnussen was there in position to protect Frijns at the climax was largely down to luck. That included some ill luck for others. Sebastien Buemi hadn’t been given a full load of fuel when he pitted the #8 Toyota just before the VSC at the top of the penultimate hour. That resulted in him being brought straight back in for a top-up to get him to the end. Toyota Racing technical director David Floury would only say that the team had been “too aggressive on strategy” at this juncture. A monster spin for da Costa at the top of Eau Rouge at the final restart, meanwhile, did for the chances of the Alpine he shared with Ferdinand Habsburg and Charles Milesi.

The #35 Alpine looked like it was probably going to win this race had the BMW’s gamble been undone by an ill-timed safety car. The #12 Jota Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh shared by Will Stevens, Louis Deletraz and Norman Nato was another contender, but its chances disappeared when it pitted under green before the VSC with two hours to go. At that point, Jota reasoned that all was more or less lost and gambled on bringing Nato straight back in for a set of softs. It didn’t pay off, which explains why the car trailed home ninth.

The #50 Ferrari, the quickest of the 499Ps in both qualifying and the race at Spa, also encountered misfortune. A jammed left front wheelnut cost the car Fuoco shared with Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen 20s when it pitted just before the two-hour mark.

There were a lot of ‘what ifs’ at Spa, of course there were, this is endurance racing. But what could be said for sure was that the way the race panned out with the safety cars, Frijns would have been sitting pretty at the front of the field for the dash to the line. What wasn’t so sure was whether without Magnussen there to protect him he would have been able to hold off a car on four new tyres. 

The #20 BMW now leads the WEC standings after two rounds

Photo by: James Moy Photography via Getty Images