Sims makes surprise Aussie BMW test appearance

Sims got behind the wheel of the SRM M6 GT3 at Phillip Island today, ahead of the beginning of Australian GT’s endurance championship at the same circuit in a little over a week.

“The team here in Australia is still in the early stages of learning the car, so today was about fact-finding,” said Sims.

“It’s about trying to transfer as much information from my experience, and from the BMW engineer’s experience, gained during the development stages and races we’ve completed over the last 10 months in Europe.

“The raw speed of the car is very good. We’ve done six race weekends on the bounce, every single weekend, over the last six weeks in Europe, so we’ve had a very intense learning period.

“The biggest thing we’ve overcome is optimising the package for each race weekend during practice sessions. At the start, it took us a bit too long – but now we have fast-tracked that and we can be in a good position for qualifying.

“The aim is to speed up that learning phase for the guys here.”

He was joined by regular BMW Team SRM drivers Steve Richards and Max Twigg.

Second M6 joins AGT

Sims won’t just be driving the BMW Team SRM M6 while he’s down under; the Briton will now head to Queensland Raceway to sample MARC GT’s brand new Beemer.

The Queensland-based MARC GT squad announced today that it will field a new M6 GT3 for Morgan Haber and Jake Camilleri for the four endurance rounds, beginning at The Island.

“This is exactly the progression and expansion we were hoping to see when we brought BMW back to motor racing in this country,” said BMW Group CEO Marc Werner.

“Adding another member to the BMW Motorsport family in the form of a second M6 GT3 is fantastic news. It’s further proof of the promise and potential the M6 GT3 package has shown so far in 2016. Given there is strength in numbers, we are delighted there is a second M6 ready to race in Australian GT.”

The new entry will be spearheaded by Haber, who says he’s looking forward to getting the new programme started after testing the SRM car back in February.

“I was really impressed with the car when I tested it for the first time,” said Haber.

“BMW know what they’re doing – just look at the success they had with the Z4 GT3.

“I was quite surprised when I drove the M6 GT3 for the first time; it was very different to anything else I’d driven before, but very nice to drive. It was comfortable right from the word go, very predictable and very balanced. I still haven’t done a lot of laps, but I can tell it’s a good car.

“Next up our plan is to get some more testing miles under our belt. We have a heavy race programme at Phillip Island with both sprint and endurance races, so we’ll be testing at Queensland Raceway later this week to ensure that we come out and put on a good show right from our first round.”