Racing legend Bobby Rahal will be the Grand Marshal of next week’s IMSA Monterey SportsCar Championship at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, a fitting honor for the man who’s won at the circuit five times as a driver and six times as the part-owner of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.
There’s been a bit of change at RLL recently with the appointment of Jay Frye as its new president overseeing the team’s operations in the IndyCar Series and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. But as RACER has reported, there’s also some uncertainty over RLL’s future in IMSA after 2025. The team’s current agreement to service BMW’s factory M Hybrid V8 prototypes runs out at the end of the year.
Asked about the negotiations to continue as BMW’s factory team in IMSA, Rahal was understandably tight-lipped but did express a desire to continue a relationship between team and manufacturer that goes back to the days of the American Le Mans Series. “We’re obviously hoping to continue this long relationship that we’ve had with BMW that’s dated back to 2008,” Rahal said during a media conference on Wednesday. “And you know, you see some of these articles — a lot of guessing, and a lot of speculation.
“There’s three-quarters of the season left over. And for us — and I can tell you with BMW Motorsport — everybody’s just really focused on this coming race at Laguna Seca, and then the race after that, and after that, and after that… there’s a lot of racing left. And so I think it’s premature to get too far into that.”
The speculation over whether BMW and RLL will remain together emerged after Dries Vanthoor took the M Hybrid V8’s third straight GTP pole position of the year at Long Beach. But while both cars have finished on the podium this year, the pace of the M Hybrid V8 through these opening races suggests that there have been opportunities for wins that have been left unfulfilled.
Rahal is focused on the positives of what has, despite the disappointments, been the strongest start to a season that BMW and RLL have had since beginning their top-tier prototype program in 2023. “I’m very pleased for the GTP program this year,” he said. “Yes, we’ve had three poles, that’s exciting — all credit to Dries and the team. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to quite put it all together come race day.
“We’ve had on-track issues with lapped traffic at Daytona and Sebring which hurt our chances at the end of the race, and of course at Long Beach, we got held up in the pits a little bit and that’s all it took, I’m afraid. So we’ve got to complete the job this time around. We were pretty quick (at Laguna Seca) last year, so I feel that we have a reasonable chance.
“Regardless of how disappointing it was to be on the front row and then lose out during a pit stop, having a podium’s a nice start. That’s a good little bump for the team, especially after the disappointments of Sebring and Daytona. So we go win some races, and that solves a lot of problems — and so that’s what we’re intending to do.”
Long Beach was Frye’s first race as RLL president, replacing Steve Eriksen in the position. With his successful business and leadership background in NASCAR and IndyCar, Rahal has been thrilled to have the former IndyCar Series president on board to bring a fresh perspective to the team’s main racing programs.