The No. 96 BMW M4 GT4 of Turner Motorsport finished tenth in the 2-hour long Alan Jay Automotive Network on the 3.74-mile 17-turn historic Sebring International Raceway.
Bill Auberlen and Robby Foley entered this race weekend focused on a strong finish in their first appearance together behind the wheel of the blue and yellow GS class BMW.
The seven-time championship winning BMW race team started from the fourth position following an impressive qualifying session by Robby Foley.
The duo fell back to as far as seventeenth while battling overheating issues in their BMW M4 GT4 beginning on lap 6 of the race. Both Auberlen and Foley pushed on despite the issues to fight back to finish tenth.
“I have to give the entire team credit here, including my co-driver Robby Foley,” said Bill Auberlen. “The Turner Motorsport team gave us a very competitive car today, the handling and overall performance was very solid. It’s too bad we ran into some early overheating issues because I think we could have been up front in the end.”
Auberlen stands seventh in all-time Michelin Pilot Challenge victories with 15, 34 top-3 finishes, 41, top-five finishes and 54 top-10 finishes in 88 race starts. . Today was his 88th start in the series.
Foley returned behind the wheel of the No. 96 M4 GT4 after his debut at Daytona in January where he finished 20th with the Father-Daughter driver combo of Bruce and Sydney McKee.
“We had a strong performance today with our BMW despite the issues,” said Robby Foley. “It was very hard to battle in traffic and make passes without our temps rising too much which would have forced us into pitlane. We were quick in all the practice sessions and qualifying so we were optimistic for a good result today.”
Both Bill Auberlen and Robby Foley will race the No. 96 GTD class M6 GT3 in tomorrow’s Sebring 12 Hour with their third driver Dillon Machavern.
Foley qualified the No. 96 BMW M6 GT3 in second place to start on the first row for the 12 hour endurance challenge.
The 67th running of the Twelve Hours of Sebring will take the green flag at the 10:40am ET on Saturday March 16th and will be broadcast beginning at 10:30am ET on CNBC Network Television. Beginning at 1:00pm the broadcast will switch over to NBC Sports followed by NBC Sports Network until the checkered flag.
