After all that Team WRT has accomplished in sports car racing around the world, you knew BMW M Team WRT was bound to get its first IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship victory at some point – the only question was when.
The moment came on a grey Sunday evening Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and the setting couldn’t have been more fitting: Indy is where the BMW M Hybrid V8 scored its first proper victory, a 1-2 finish for BMW M Team RLL in a wet-to-dry six-hour Battle on the Bricks in 2024. Indy is also where Team WRT has won the last three editions of the Indianapolis 8 Hour, which will cement the team as the most successful in the short history of the Intercontinental GT Challenge’s outgoing American round.
On Sunday, Sheldon van der Linde and Dries Vanthoor scored BMW M Team WRT’s first IMSA win, to go along with WRT’s first and second WEC Hypercar victories – and now both drivers feel like there’s nowhere for the team to go in IMSA but up.
“We know that we’re not in the championship fight anymore, so every result that we can have now through the end of the year is a bonus,” van der Linde said after capping off his team’s victory in this year’s two-hour, 40-minute edition of the Battle on the Bricks. “We’ve won in WEC this year, two wins with both cars, and this was the only thing missing from our CV this year.
“It’s an incredible year for the team in itself, and I assume we’re only going to get stronger as next year progresses as well. I think it’s extremely important for us to get one on the board now and show that we can do it. We have the confidence now, and hopefully we can use the momentum to keep getting these results.”
It was a little less than a year ago that BMW announced Team WRT as its new IMSA GTP service provider, replacing its longtime partner, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. With a relatively small core staff in the States to start with, WRT took residence in the Haas F1 Team’s American campus in Kannapolis, North Carolina for its first season.
Expectations were kept modest going into the team’s Rolex 24 At Daytona debut, but a third-place run quickly raised those expectations, along with WRT finally breaking through for its first WEC Hypercar victories at Spa and Interlagos.
“I think during the whole season we’ve always been in the mix and fighting for victories,” said Vanthoor, “but just never really been able to put everything together. And today, we did.
“It’s a great relief for me and Sheldon, but also for the team at WRT. Everybody’s been working so hard this season, you know, they’ve built up the team in a couple of months, and it’s so difficult to build up a team in such a short amount of time.
“And also, you always have the experience (racing) in Europe, but then when you come to the U.S., it’s just different. But now to have that relief, I think we’re super happy and super proud of it.”
Van der Linde added that after three podium finishes between the two team cars in IMSA, “It’s nice to give a reward back to the team for all the hard work that they’ve put in to build up this programme, and now to materialise it and get a good result, it’s a dream come true.”
The South African driver played the most pivotal role in getting the #24 BMW the win. With five and a half minutes left, he lunged past the #64 Ford Racing Mustang GT3 Evo (which was fighting for its own victory) and the GTP-leading #31 Cadillac Whelen V-Series.R to take the lead after running Earl Bamber and the Cadillac close since the final restart.
“My engineer said to me on the radio, ‘you’ve got one more pack of GTs with 10 minutes to go,’ and I knew that was my last chance to get him – on pace, they were just too fast for us,” van der Linde recalled.
“I tried to stay close to him, before that he got stuck behind a GT car going into turn 10, and I got a very good run and went all the way to the inside. He wasn’t able to see me in his mirrors.”
And van der Linde admitted that the freedom of racing with no championship stakes was what enabled his breathtaking turn 12 overtake. “I was willing to risk everything for the win today,” he said.
“I knew obviously that they (Bamber and Jack Aitken) wouldn’t take too much risk being in the championship fight.
“We could play elbows out, and they couldn’t. I knew I had to use that to our advantage and it worked out perfectly.”
After replacing RLL this off-season, questions would have been asked if Team WRT went through all of 2026 without matching RLL’s annual benchmark of taking at least one win in the last three seasons of GTP competition. That thought can now freely leave the mind.
Now as 2026 winds down at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, site of the 29th Motul Petit Le Mans, the question now becomes if WRT will do what it was brought in for when BMW made the decision to switch teams: To turn BMW into legitimate GTP championship contenders for the first time in this era.
Images © Jack Webster / Dailysportscar.com
