The triple DTM champion believes that the victory achieved by Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Andre Lotterer for Porsche Penske Motorsport within the Qatar 1812km season-opener provides BMW “hope” within the first yr of its WEC programme with the M Hybrid V8 run by WRT.
However he burdened that following a finest results of tenth on the Losail Worldwide Circuit, promoted into the factors by Cadillac’s disqualification, BMW nonetheless has work to do.
Requested by Autosport for his views on the impression Porsche’s victory has had on the BMW camp, Rast stated: “It positively provides hope as a result of you’ll be able to see that the LMDh automobile really can battle for general victory, we’re the identical automobile class kind of, so the potential is there.
“However most likely we want a bit extra time.
“Our take a look at programme within the winter or final yr for this season was a bit compromised as a consequence of plenty of climate. I’m not saying that that is the rationale, however we weren’t very fortunate with the climate situations and didn’t do plenty of dry operating.
“Each take a look at we get now in dry situations helps lots to simply make one other step.
“Regardless that it’s only for driver consolation or extra consistency within the automobile, that helps already. We simply want extra time and extra testing to get on that degree.”
Photograph by: JEP / Motorsport Images
BMW Motorsport boss Andreas Roos additionally urged warning on the Bavarian marque’s first WEC programme since its M8 GTE contested the GTE Professional class within the 2018-19 ‘superseason’ with the MTEK squad.
The M Hybrid V8 makes use of the identical spec rear axle hybrid system as Porsche’s 963, and was raced within the IMSA SportsCar Championship final yr by the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing squad, however Roos pointed to the a number of operational variations between IMSA and the WEC to justify a necessity “to be lifelike”.
“Now we have all of the elements that we want,” he stated.
“However whether or not we are able to extract all the things from these elements, that’s the query. We nonetheless have plenty of work to do, we’re not the place we need to be.
“Qatar for certain didn’t go as everybody needed, but it surely was our first race within the championship. It was additionally the primary time WRT was working the automobiles underneath race situations.
“We realized lots, however we nonetheless have to enhance lots.”
WRT boss Vincent Vosse expressed optimism that the staff is “getting into the correct course” following its commencement as champion of the LMP2 class that was dropped from the championship this yr.
“In the event you got here to the field in the course of the race at Qatar, it was a standard race, nothing hectic,” he instructed Autosport.
“The drivers weren’t complaining in regards to the automobile, it was not like we had been having huge points. I’ve to say it’s a part of the method.
“I keep in mind a kind of groups that I’ve plenty of respect for, Penske is an efficient instance, the primary three or 4 races [in 2023], they struggled.
“We had been saying that isn’t what we had been anticipating from Porsche and Penske. That proves it takes time.”