Notes From the Field - Team BMW at Road Atlanta

 It was another beautiful weekend for racing, and yet another frustrating day for Team BMW.  The conditions at the track were marvelous Sunday, and the hopes in the pit were high, expecting a solid finish for the BMW team.  But alas, it seems the pattern of hard hits and extra pit stops continue to plague the #18 Z4 driven by Travis Billingsley.  The race started with the usual tussle from flag drop to first corner, but things sorted out pretty quick.  

 The BMW quickly settled into a nice battle for 2nd position early in the race, and lasted quite a lot of laps.  The duel with the #2 Porsche of MBR was the best Travis has been involved in yet.  Laps rolled by with hard charges, position changes, and white knuckles as the battle raged on.  Eventually, the BMW was able to start pulling away from the Porsche and start trying to secure the position.  Several laps went by with the gap between 2nd and 3rd place widening slightly.  But then... 

 Travis began encountering lap traffic.  And while a couple of laps went by with no incident, an odd braking maneuver by the Aston Martin that he was trying to lap resulted in the BMW tangling with the back of the Aston.  As par for such incidents it seems, there was, as later evidenced, detrimental damage to the front left brakes and suspension on the #18 car.  Travis had initially radioed to the pits that he was going to stay out and maintain a little bit of ground, but at the end of the back straight, the brakes would just not stop the car and it ended up in the sand.  At that point it was obvious that trying to keep the car out till the next scheduled pit would lose far too much time.  

 So, after getting things sorted during the rather long, unscheduled pit stop, Travis rolled the BMW back out to see if there were any points to be salvaged.  The last 3rd of the race was mostly uneventful.  There were a few laps that Travis was able to revisit the battle with Ethan Maestri, but this was for naught as the last pit that would be required for Team BMW to have the tires and fuel to finish would put anything better than P4 out of reach for the #18.  

Ultimately, P4 is not a bad finish among such a talented field of drivers, but expectations and hopes were high this morning that a different German manufacturer would be occupying one of the steps on the podium.