Mid-Ohio: BMW Team PTG qualifying report

BMW Team PTG M3s Qualify 8th and 9th for American Le Mans at Mid-Ohio

Lexington, Ohio - May 20, 2006-- Bill Auberlen, driving the No. 21 BMW Team PTG M3 qualified eighth in the GT2 class for tomorrow's American Le Mans at Mid-Ohio. His time of 1:25.570 minutes around the 2.4-mile, 15-turn Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course puts him one position ahead of teammate Justin Marks. Marks, driving the No. 22 BMW Team PTG M3 will start ninth in class after qualifying with a time of 1:25.649 minutes.

"We are certainly not back to the level we have had this M3 program in past years, said Auberlen. "There are still quite a few issues to rectify and we just need more time. We bolted on a set of tires at the close of the practice session just before qualifying that transformed the car. We had not marked that set, but I think we will have to go back to it for the race and make it work."

Marks said, "We made some changes that worked well in this morning's practice session, but we may have gotten a bit too aggressive with the next set of changes as we seem to have taken a step in the wrong direction this afternoon."

-bmw