GTP tire challenges allow drivers to “make a difference”

The #25 BMW M Hybrid V8 of De Phillippi and Nick Yelloly has scooped two second-places in the last two IMSA rounds at Sebring and Long Beach, and currently lies fourth in the championship, just 21 points from leaders Nick Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet of Porsche Penske Motorsports.

De Phillippi, who scored four wins for BMW in IMSA’s now defunct GT Le Mans class, said different tactics regarding tire usage for this weekend’s fourth round on the abrasive Laguna Seca surface will likely shape the outcome of the race.

“Obviously you have to double-stint some tires but you want to avoid being on those tires as long as you can,” he said, “so it’s going to be a lottery as to who takes that hit early, who takes the hit late. And as we saw at Long Beach, we saw people ready to take the hit on cold tires.

“That’s a big thing we don’t know yet either. Laguna puts a lot more energy through the tires, so the warm-up phase will be so different from Long Beach. At Long Beach in qualifying it took everybody 11, 12, 13 laps to get the tires to really switch on; that’s not going to be the case at Laguna, although it is going to be on the chilly side as it normally is up there.

“Although driving on old, used tires is not fun by any means, it does leave us as drivers some kinda scope to make a difference as far as how we drive, how we manage a stint. It’s not just a “flat-out from beginning to end”- type deal. From that perspective I do enjoy it a lot: you have to think. I enjoy, the technical side of that, finding different ways to make a difference.”

De Phillippi observed that GTP cars, when compared with their predecessors, the DPi cars, “have a lot of power, the tire takes a lot longer to come up to speed and we have less downforce.

“I’ll never forget my out-lap at Long Beach, changing to fourth and fifth gear out of Turn 8 and still getting wheelspin. That was a ‘Holy smokes!’ moment. But it makes the car fun. It’s not the 1000hp that they had back in the day, but it certainly gives you that sensation, that feeling.

“It’s going to be a handful on older tires, but it’s the same for everybody, and it leaves you with some different parameters to try and plan differently and find an advantage later in the race.”

Regarding the competitiveness of the Rahal Letterman Lanigan-run BMWs compared with the Acuras, Cadillacs and Porsches – now bolstered by a third entry from JDC Miller Motorsports – De Phillippi admitted he is as much in the dark as anyone else, but is optimistic.

“I think it’s proven this year that you don’t really know what to expect going into a weekend, as far as who will be strong, who will have an advantage,” he said. “Certainly we’ve been on the back foot with late development and slowly playing catch-up. Everyone in the team from BMW and RLL have worked hard to close that gap and at Long Beach we made a big step.

“We don’t have any setup info or prior data from running a prototype [at Laguna Seca] so we’re purely relying on the simulator – which for us at Long Beach proved to be pretty similar, at least as far as giving us a baseline. So that’s a positive. We had four days in the sim last week, so we should again have a good baseline to start off with…

“So if we can make another step like we did at Long Beach, we should be right there in the mix. In the race we had solid long-run pace at Long Beach.”

Asked where he felt the team had made the biggest gains since the season started, De Phillippi replied: “For us it’s really been about trying to connect all the elements together. A lot of it has been on the systems side – traction control, braking, how the whole hybrid system is working.

“Getting all that to tie together has been a challenge. That helps us a lot with driveability which allows us as drivers to feel confident to really attack the track. So that’s been a big step for us.

“And then just general set-up. A lot of the testing we did early on was basically just trying to get the car running and trying to pound laps. Now we’re actually able to explore different setups, different combinations of springs, dampers, etc.

“That’s been a fun process for us, getting to learn about the car and trying to explore what it offers us and how to extract the most out of it.”