BMW Motorsport Sebring Final Qualifying
Final Qualifying Thursday
Round 2, American Le Mans Series
15 March 2001, Sebring, Fla.
new BMW M3 GTR third on GT grid
Munich/Sebring. BMW M3s will start third, fifth, sixth and seventh on the GT
grid for Saturday's 12 Hours at Sebring, second race in the 2001 American Le
Mans Series. BMW Motorsport driver Jorg Muller (D) qualified the new
No. 42 BMW M3 GTR in two minutes 7.420 seconds on the 3.7-mile Sebring
International Raceway road course. He will share driving duties with
JJ Lehto (FIN). Their teammate Dirk Muller (D) started the final
qualifying session in the No. 43 BMW M3, but retired after two laps with an
engine failure. He and co-driver Fredrik Ekblom (S) will start seventh
in class, based on Ekblom's Wednesday qualifying time of 2:08.612. BMW
Team PTG M3s will start fifth and sixth in the GT class.
BMW Motorsport team manager Charly Lamm: "The 42 BMW M3 GTR ran very
well in today's free practice as well as in qualifying. Third position
is a good achievement for this car the first time out and a fantastic reward
for the BMW engineers and the team who got this car ready in time for the
Sebring race. The day also started well in the 43 BMW M3: Dirk and
Fredrik worked on the race setup in the morning and then it went wrong in
the afternoon when Dirk had an engine failure two laps into qualifying.
We will change the engine and concentrate on race preparations in today's
night practice."
JJ Lehto #42: "Everything is still very new with this car, so we still
have little problems here and there. But it's a good test race for us.
I think we'll be quite competitive. We'll see what kind of pace we can
keep and how fast we can go. We have to get a reliable car for the
race and get as much information out of the race as possible. We'll
make the best of what we have."
Jorg Muller #42: "BMW definitely built a car that is quicker than the
old one. You can't expect a new car to be there immediately, but I'm
pleased with the qualifying at the moment. I'm very happy to be with
Team Schnitzer because they'll sort it out and we'll be competitive this
season. That's what's important."
Fredrik Ekblom #43: "There's not much to say because I didn't drive.
Unfortunately, we had a technical problem. But better it happens today
than on Saturday."
Dirk Muller #43: "It was a short qualifying for us. We were
trying to further check our race setup, but all of a sudden, we had an
engine problem. We need to check what happened."
BMW Press: Guido Stalmann, tel +49 (0) 89 382 23401, fax +49 (0) 89
382 27563, e-mail: Guido.Stalmann@bmw.de
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Sylvia Proudfoot
spur07@cs.com
403 287 3945