The ‘growing pains’ behind a re-energized Paul Miller Racing

Paul Miller Racing might well have become part of the furniture in IMSA in your mind, but it may as well have been a totally new team for 2025.

BMW continues to ramp up its support of the squad – with an upgraded ‘Evo’-spec car for this season – and it has expanded to become a two-car GTD Pro team for the first time in its history.

It only made the leap to GTD Pro last year, winning the Michelin Endurance Cup with Madison Snow and Neil Verhagen, with third driver Bryan Sellers leaving the team at the end of the year after a long spell – another big change.

The new car boasts an all-new line-up to the team and IMSA in the No.48, BMW factory drivers Dan Harper and Max Hesse, alongside Verhagen and team mainstay Snow in the No.1.

But this season there’s also been an injection of new engineers, mechanics and team personnel that make the team recognizable if somewhat unfamiliar in its line-up for 2025.

We say all of this to point out that it has been a brilliant season in the circumstances.

Harper and Hesse took the team’s first win with the M4 GT3 Evo, at Watkins Glen, and led a 2-3 at Sebring, and while a disappointing result at CTMP recently hurt their championship chances, the No.1 car leads the No.48 in the Michelin Endurance Cup. Again.

While this team is a household name stemming from Miller’s own stellar sportscar career, it’s had a massive refresh that might not be obvious on the outside, and it came with some tough decisions to make for the team.

“I think Paul’s very happy with this,” Mitchell Simmons, team principal at PMR, tells RACER.

“I think he wanted to have a factory, two-car team. Obviously there’s a lot of changes with a two-car team.

“I don’t know that Paul’s actually enjoyed it as much as he thought he would. There’s a lot of headache with a two-car team. There’s a lot of headache with factory sponsorship.

“There are items there that aren’t conducive to the hobby-type thing that he likes to run. He likes to enjoy himself and he likes to enjoy racing. 

“Running it more as a business kind of takes some of that fun away, and certainly running a two-car, semi-factory effort is more of a business type relationship than it is to a hobby.”

Still, it’s this decision that may have allowed the team to continue in its most fun form possible.

The influx of personnel has given the existing staff at PMR a fresh boost. The drivers are young and providing fresh perspective, too.

PMR has undergone a raft of changes since last season, but the team is adapting quickly. Brandon Badraoui/IMSA

“All of us have been together for so long and most of the crew here have been together for ages and when we started we were all just all about racing with our hair on fire,” says Simmons. “Now everyone has a wife and kids, so our priorities have changed. I kind of wanted to bring some new young blood into the team and to kind of get some of that spark back.”

He knew that young blood would bring with it “growing pains”, especially on the No.1 car with Harper and Hesse only having done Indianapolis before. A new tire to learn, and a new championship to get to grips with.

While there have been those growing pains, both drivers have adapted incredibly quickly. They haven’t qualified outside of the top five this season and would almost certainly be better off in the points without a really costly Daytona DNF, where they were caught up in an incident not of their making.

Detroit and Laguna were always going to be a challenge for the BMW, which is massive in comparison to the likes of the Ferrari in the class, and makes its speed by stretching its legs and certainly not on tight and twisty tracks.

In the No.1 car the peaks haven’t quite been the same, and the issues have stacked up. A tire pressure violation at Watkins Glen cost the team a 1-2, a slow pitstop after pole at CTMP, drive-through for contact at Detroit and a risky strategy gamble at Laguna which needed a yellow that never came.

While they might be the new guys in the No.48, Harper and Hesse have been racing together since 2020.

Asked if that’s been a key to the adaptation, Hesse replies: “ I don’t like Dan, so it’s been tough!”

Joking aside, he says: “I think this is making us strong this early as well, because it is a new championship, it is a different tire, new tracks for us all the time. We have to learn nine tracks. 

“So obviously these things are helping because Dan and I, we like the car the same way, which is already a good start and then also with the pit stops and everything, it’s very straightforward to be honest. So in those terms, it’s very good.”

Hesse also praised his new team, saying “the preparation the guys are putting in is really honestly one of the best I’ve ever seen”, highlighting the lack of any major technical issues halting their chances in the races despite the tweaked car being new to everybody.

As Simmons points out, the pair are sometimes in BMW cars outside of IMSA, which gives them a great insight into potential developments, keeps them fresh, and they also know most of the BMW staff joining PMR for IMSA already, so the working relationship is smoother.