dhabes
11-19-2004, 12:33 PM
From theracesite.com:
Bill Auberlen has been winning with BMW for nearly a decade, spanning a number of cars, classes and series. This season, Auberlen was nearly unstoppable in the GT class of the Rolex Series as he drove the No. 21 Prototype Technology Group BMW M3 to one victory after another, eventually winning the GT driver championship.
Auberlen and Boris Said teamed up to win four rounds early in the season. After that, they were each paired with younger drivers and Auberlen's teammate for the remainder of the year was Justin Marks. The two of them managed four wins together to bring Auberlen's total to eight, although Auberlen admitted that getting a new teammate was a challenge for him.
"Well, it was tough because whenever you go racing to win you want the guy you're teamed up with to be the most experienced guy in the world, basically, and Boris is one of those guys," said Auberlen, who recently returned from a well-deserved vacation. "Boris and I had just finished winning four races together, back to back to back to back, and then I get this very young guy, Justin Marks, who is good but lacked the experience. So it was a steep curve and I was very hard on him sometimes, trying to push him to new levels that he's never been to. He would accept a third place or a fourth place or a second place, whereas I would not accept any of that. I thought I taught him a lot of ways to start winning, and once he started winning, you couldn't stop us. He became very good at going fast, but it was a very steep learning curve for him."
Another challenge that was posed to Auberlen was having Said as his rival, rather than his teammate. Said was the only driver in the series who came close to taking the GT driver championship lead away from Auberlen.
"You want to race with Boris, you never want to race against Boris," Auberlen advised. "He's a good guy to race against because he's very nice and nothing rubs him the wrong way, he can pretty much handle anything. But he won't make mistakes and he won't do what you want other guys to do, which is fall off the track or make a mistake or screw up. They always push you and you'd better be up to the job to push yourself as hard as you can because it's tough to beat him."
Auberlen learned just how tough it really was during the final round of the Rolex Series, held on Halloween at California Speedway. Auberlen was in the car when motor problems developed, and soon Said seemed to have the upper hand in the championship. A late-race push gave Auberlen and Marks a better finish than they had expected, but it was only enough to tie Auberlen and Said in the championship. In the case of a tie, the driver with the most wins gets the title, and Auberlen was again on top thanks to his eight victories.
"At the start of the race I was leading and everything was wonderful," said Auberlen of the day. "And all I had to do was if Boris won I had to finish fifth, if he finished second I had to finish sixth, that was the deal. I'm leading, and I'm running away, everything is going as planned, and then boom, the motor just dies. Luckily it died so that I made it to the tip of pit lane and my guys pushed me in. That all of a sudden started the roller coaster ride of my life. You've never seen me go from being so happy in the car to 'all hope is lost' because we're in tenth with no hope of getting to the front. (Then) that car goes to second and we go to sixth at the very end and we win the championship. An unbelievable roller coaster ride which was actually painful. At first I was so happy that I'd won the championship, followed by feelings of 'man, I wish Boris could have won it with me' because he's the one that started the deal out with me and we should have won it together. So I was kind of sad about that, but happy to win the championship. That would have been the third time in a BMW that I'd come to the last race and lost the championship by a couple of points. And to just squeak it out by tying and then winning it by wins, wow. It's just too close."
Auberlen has been winning races since childhood, when he got his start in motocross, and he exhibits an obvious passion for the sport. He is driven to win, and enjoys extending his involvement with the team past more than just sitting in the drivers seat.
"Whenever I get into a car, whether it be a BMW or any car on the planet, my deal is to be the quickest," he explained. "The fastest in the car, the fastest in practice, the fastest in qualifying and the fastest in the race, so if ever something happens where I'm not the quickest in a practice session or something, I get very down on myself and I push very hard the next time. So I'm not only motivated race to race, I'm motivated session to session. It keeps me striving to always find some more with the car, technically with the car, with the electronic systems of the car. I'm one of the guys that always sits down with the engineers to never stop the progress of the car."
For the 2005 season, Auberlen will most likely be behind the wheel of a BMW again. He is working on some other plans, as well, including driving with Panoz Motorsports in the American Le Mans Series. Auberlen drove with the team in 2002, piloting the LMP-01.
Auberlen feels that despite the significant differences between the American Le Mans Series and the Rolex Series, there are advantages to both of them. "You tend to think of American Le Mans as pinkies up at the dinner table. It is the expensive, posh way to go racing. It's starting to lose its members a little bit because of the expense. But you're in a very high-tech piece of machinery, whether it be the Audi, or the MG, or the BMW prototype cars that used to race. Very big budgets, very high tech extreme racing. And it's nice because it's very high end. Whereas you get in a Daytona Prototype and it's low end, it's much more basic, and it's more the NASCAR of sports car racing. And that strategy paid off for them. They've got big fields. You sit in the car and think 'oh, it's not that fast' but you are racing nose to tail with 25 or 30 other cars. That's what makes it great is the racing."
If all of Auberlen's plans come to fruition, he will be one of the busiest drivers in the paddock. And, as always, he can be expected to be one of the quickest.
Bill Auberlen has been winning with BMW for nearly a decade, spanning a number of cars, classes and series. This season, Auberlen was nearly unstoppable in the GT class of the Rolex Series as he drove the No. 21 Prototype Technology Group BMW M3 to one victory after another, eventually winning the GT driver championship.
Auberlen and Boris Said teamed up to win four rounds early in the season. After that, they were each paired with younger drivers and Auberlen's teammate for the remainder of the year was Justin Marks. The two of them managed four wins together to bring Auberlen's total to eight, although Auberlen admitted that getting a new teammate was a challenge for him.
"Well, it was tough because whenever you go racing to win you want the guy you're teamed up with to be the most experienced guy in the world, basically, and Boris is one of those guys," said Auberlen, who recently returned from a well-deserved vacation. "Boris and I had just finished winning four races together, back to back to back to back, and then I get this very young guy, Justin Marks, who is good but lacked the experience. So it was a steep curve and I was very hard on him sometimes, trying to push him to new levels that he's never been to. He would accept a third place or a fourth place or a second place, whereas I would not accept any of that. I thought I taught him a lot of ways to start winning, and once he started winning, you couldn't stop us. He became very good at going fast, but it was a very steep learning curve for him."
Another challenge that was posed to Auberlen was having Said as his rival, rather than his teammate. Said was the only driver in the series who came close to taking the GT driver championship lead away from Auberlen.
"You want to race with Boris, you never want to race against Boris," Auberlen advised. "He's a good guy to race against because he's very nice and nothing rubs him the wrong way, he can pretty much handle anything. But he won't make mistakes and he won't do what you want other guys to do, which is fall off the track or make a mistake or screw up. They always push you and you'd better be up to the job to push yourself as hard as you can because it's tough to beat him."
Auberlen learned just how tough it really was during the final round of the Rolex Series, held on Halloween at California Speedway. Auberlen was in the car when motor problems developed, and soon Said seemed to have the upper hand in the championship. A late-race push gave Auberlen and Marks a better finish than they had expected, but it was only enough to tie Auberlen and Said in the championship. In the case of a tie, the driver with the most wins gets the title, and Auberlen was again on top thanks to his eight victories.
"At the start of the race I was leading and everything was wonderful," said Auberlen of the day. "And all I had to do was if Boris won I had to finish fifth, if he finished second I had to finish sixth, that was the deal. I'm leading, and I'm running away, everything is going as planned, and then boom, the motor just dies. Luckily it died so that I made it to the tip of pit lane and my guys pushed me in. That all of a sudden started the roller coaster ride of my life. You've never seen me go from being so happy in the car to 'all hope is lost' because we're in tenth with no hope of getting to the front. (Then) that car goes to second and we go to sixth at the very end and we win the championship. An unbelievable roller coaster ride which was actually painful. At first I was so happy that I'd won the championship, followed by feelings of 'man, I wish Boris could have won it with me' because he's the one that started the deal out with me and we should have won it together. So I was kind of sad about that, but happy to win the championship. That would have been the third time in a BMW that I'd come to the last race and lost the championship by a couple of points. And to just squeak it out by tying and then winning it by wins, wow. It's just too close."
Auberlen has been winning races since childhood, when he got his start in motocross, and he exhibits an obvious passion for the sport. He is driven to win, and enjoys extending his involvement with the team past more than just sitting in the drivers seat.
"Whenever I get into a car, whether it be a BMW or any car on the planet, my deal is to be the quickest," he explained. "The fastest in the car, the fastest in practice, the fastest in qualifying and the fastest in the race, so if ever something happens where I'm not the quickest in a practice session or something, I get very down on myself and I push very hard the next time. So I'm not only motivated race to race, I'm motivated session to session. It keeps me striving to always find some more with the car, technically with the car, with the electronic systems of the car. I'm one of the guys that always sits down with the engineers to never stop the progress of the car."
For the 2005 season, Auberlen will most likely be behind the wheel of a BMW again. He is working on some other plans, as well, including driving with Panoz Motorsports in the American Le Mans Series. Auberlen drove with the team in 2002, piloting the LMP-01.
Auberlen feels that despite the significant differences between the American Le Mans Series and the Rolex Series, there are advantages to both of them. "You tend to think of American Le Mans as pinkies up at the dinner table. It is the expensive, posh way to go racing. It's starting to lose its members a little bit because of the expense. But you're in a very high-tech piece of machinery, whether it be the Audi, or the MG, or the BMW prototype cars that used to race. Very big budgets, very high tech extreme racing. And it's nice because it's very high end. Whereas you get in a Daytona Prototype and it's low end, it's much more basic, and it's more the NASCAR of sports car racing. And that strategy paid off for them. They've got big fields. You sit in the car and think 'oh, it's not that fast' but you are racing nose to tail with 25 or 30 other cars. That's what makes it great is the racing."
If all of Auberlen's plans come to fruition, he will be one of the busiest drivers in the paddock. And, as always, he can be expected to be one of the quickest.