IMSA’s All-Time Winner Is among the Newest Inductees to the Walk of Fame at his Home Race in Long Beach
By John Oreovicz
LONG BEACH, Calif. – Last month’s 70th running of the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Presented by Advance Auto Parts was Bill Auberlen’s 500th race start for BMW, and a milestone win in the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship’s GT Daytona (GTD) class looked like a realistic possibility.
Auberlen held the GTD lead in the classic endurance race with less than 90 minutes to go on March 19, but a bump-and-run pass for the top spot by the eventual class-winning Ferrari and an unscheduled pit stop due to a mix-up over drive time regulations dropped him and Turner Motorsport co-drivers Robby Foley and Michael Dinan to fourth place at the checkered flag.
Sebring is a huge on every sports car racer’s calendar, but Auberlen may have even more anticipation for his 501st race for BMW than he did for the more numerically celebrated No. 500. Not only is the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach staged on Auberlen’s home ground in Southern California, the ever-youthful 53-year-old was inducted into the Long Beach Grand Prix Walk of Fame on Thursday morning.
The local recognition for an international career that has produced IMSA records for pole positions (45) and race wins (64) in its top-level series truly resonates with a man whose interest in racing was sparked growing up in nearby Redondo Beach, where his father, Gary, operated a speedometer repair shop.
“It’s almost surreal,” Auberlen said. “Long Beach has always been my home circuit, so it’s kind of a ‘local kid makes good’ thing, and I’m truly honored.”
The hometown boy theme is no joke. Auberlen attended the inaugural Long Beach GP, a Formula 5000 race staged in September 1975 to prove the new street circuit’s worthiness for its Formula 1 debut in March 1976.
He was 6 years old at the time and has vivid memories of the original circuit, which included a steep climb and descent from Ocean Boulevard.
“I was a kid. My dad took me there,” Auberlen recalled. “I had an old-school tape recorder, and I recorded all the cars. I used to listen to the tape of them at home all the time, and I’m pretty sure being there is completely what hooked me on racing. I was really young, but I was mesmerized. And I kept going to Long Beach almost every year since. I think I’ve only missed one.”
In addition to running Speedometer Service, Gary Auberlen raced off-road motorcycles in the desert. Around the same time he took his son to the inaugural Long Beach event, Bill began racing minibikes at the legendary (and now closed) Ascot Park near Gardena.
Bill worked odd jobs around the speedometer shop and helped with his dad’s racing efforts, which shifted from motorcycles to sports cars in the 1980s. Bill made a similar transition and made his IMSA debut in the 1987 Rolex 24 At Daytona in a Porsche 911 he shared with his father.
The rest, as they say, is history. Auberlen harbored open-wheel dreams and was under consideration to replace Dario Franchitti for Hogan Racing in the CART-sanctioned IndyCar series in 1998, but he decided instead to join BMW as a factory-supported driver.
His sports car career took him all over the world, and eventually back to Long Beach, where he earned two of his IMSA wins for BMW Team RLL in 2013 (GT class) and ’15 (GT Le Mans). The 2013 victory remains among Auberlen’s favorite memories.
“The first win was incredible because, not only did we win on my home track, I had all my friends there,” he said. “We took that trophy and went to Hennessy’s Tavern in Redondo Beach. Once word got out that the trophy was there and my whole crew was there, it seems like the whole town came out. Pretty soon the place was packed, and we all celebrated that victory together. It was really neat.”
Auberlen is hoping he has more than one reason to celebrate at Long Beach this weekend – a GTD class race win in addition to the Walk of Fame induction. Alex Zanardi, a two-time IndyCar series champion and Long Beach winner in 1997 and ’98, is this year’s other honoree.
“I’m not going to tell them that they selected the wrong guy, but to be with Alex and among those names on that sidewalk and to be inducted into something that’s so amazing is pretty incredible and humbling, for sure,” Auberlen said. “I’ve been fortunate to have such a good, long career, and we can still bring wins and championships to this day. I owe a big debt of gratitude to all the people and the teams that made it possible.”