Has IMSA found a new fastest driver?

To take back-to-back poles in IMSA is one unusual feat, but for the second of those to come at your first-ever visit to the treacherous Sebring is quite another.

After his first proper season in a top-level prototype last year, Dries Vanthoor is quickly becoming one of the hottest properties in IMSA. He’s not only fast, but he’s witty, sometimes shockingly honest and uncensored, has a brother racing in the series with who he has a love/rivalry relationship, and is a teammate of ex-Formula 1 driver Kevin Magnussen who has brought added attention to the BMW program, too.

Vanthoor had only three IMSA starts to his name entering this season – in 2019 and 2020 for Audi and then last year in the M Hybrid V8 GTP car, all at Daytona – but took poles at both in impressive fashion, and after only doing Daytona last year, he’s full-time IMSA this season with Phillip Eng and cameos from Magnussen for the longer races.

“We knew that we did a lot of work on the car, and we hoped that this year, the car is going to be a lot more competitive, and you can fight for some victories,” Vanthoor tells RACER.

“So after the race in Daytona, that track I know well, Sebring, I don’t know that track at all… first time out there! So then to be on pole is pretty cool and showed again that the car is performing well. But also a nice feeling, because Sebring is not the easiest of tracks to just rock up and drive.”

Unfortunately, both races have not played out as BMW would have wanted. In the first, a dislodged diffuser in the final hours robbed Vanthoor’s No.24 car of a chance to win and it finished fourth. At Sebring, the No.24 again appeared to be the best of BMW’s chances at victory, but was smashed in the pitlane by the No.60 Acura.

Perhaps the positive to take from that – as well as Vanthoor’s pace – is that the BMW is a much-improved package for 2025.

It had a breakthrough weekend in IMSA with its first win – and a 1-2 – with this car coming at Indianapolis in the second half of last year, but even bigger changes since then have helped push the car’s development.

“I think the biggest open thing, which I think everybody knows, is the brake change we did – changing manufacturer of brakes compared to last year,” Vanthoor explains. “This opened up a lot of new things for us.

“Last year, we were very locked in with the brakes. They were glazing and causing issues with tire pressures. We could not be aggressive on them, which I think is still an important factor on a race car, to have good tire pressures, and we could never really do that, because there was a certain threshold where we can’t go below.

“That affects the whole balance, and also the drivability. The car last year was just not as good as this year.

“We also worked a lot on other areas, on systems. (But) I think the biggest thing that helped a lot of other areas forward was the brake change. That was a good call to do that.”

Vanthoor’s speed and off-season improvements to the car have helped give BMW the prime spot for the start of the races. The job now is to still be there at the end. Brandon Badraoui/IMSA

Because the hybrid regen is done through braking it’s a key part of the car, and also impacts another key battle ground in terms of tire warm-up. There are no tire warmers in IMSA, and any gains on cold rubber versus the opposition can be massive.

Vanthoor has been the poster boy for BMW – run in conjunction with Rahal Letterman Lanigan in IMSA – and its improvements. But it also feels like he’s developing a cult following as the latest in a long line of series entertainers.

In a first stint at Daytona where he simply drove away from the opposition to a frankly ludicrous amount of 13 seconds before the first stops, he made a mistake entering his pitbox. It’s a “s**t stint when you end like that”, he said angrily while being interviewed.

In Sebring, he chastised himself after his first stint again, saying he drove “like a billy,” which is slang term for a racing driver not doing a very good job. You can probably add two and two together when you start rhyming it…

RACER asked Vanthoor about this, whether it was intentional, and if he thought about it or if his reactions are just natural.

“People who know me – and also I don’t mind being open about it – I am a bit of a laid back, open, honest guy that says what I think, I always say what I think to someone, and if the guy doesn’t like it, that’s his problem, not mine,” he says.

“And I’m also a very critical on myself. If I do something wrong, I’m very upset at myself. I will just do everything I can to do that better. It will also give me a bit of a fire up to do even better.

“I am just very pissed off about myself, and I think it’s also very clear (with) how I am out of the car, my attitude, how I am at that moment. It’s obvious that it’s not a good time to speak to me because I’m just pissed off, and this is nothing to blame on anyone.

“The moments you addressed , it was me who did a sh***y job.

“And then it’s also… I don’t have examples, but for sure, I believe that there are always drivers in the whole racing world, or in any sport, that talk about other things than themselves, to find things to use as to why they were not strong.

A change in brake supplier ahead of the current season has helped unlock more of the car’s speed. Mike Levitt/IMSA

“I think you should just be honest to yourself, and this will be the only way that helps you forward.”

Vanthoor’s correct that there are a lot of drivers out there who will look for excuses before taking responsibility for an incident. Some might see it as playing a game; that you don’t want to show weakness to the people who employ you in what is a cut-throat industry.

Vanthoor prefers the notion that honesty is the best policy.

He speaks in the same way when assessing BMW’s performance in IMSA so far. While the poles are obviously good, there were elements to both races where the team as a collective did not execute to the standard of the competition, whether that’s the drivers, strategy, pitstops etc.

“I think at the moment, that’s our biggest issue, and our weakness, is that we can’t execute the race as we would like,” he says. “We make too many mistakes.

“Also, for me in Sebring, my race wasn’t executed flawlessly. So that’s on me. But outside of that, there were also a lot of other areas as a team we did wrong. You shouldn’t be scared to say this, because when this happens, we have to just speak openly about it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“But it’s now time that we execute a race properly, especially if we always have a good starting position, (and) hopefully in the next coming races as well. The last two, we were looking good, but then the execution just doesn’t follow up.

“We are trying to improve it. We are going to improve it, and we know what to improve. So it’s for sure going to get better. I think at the moment, it’s our working point.”

In comparison to Porsche, which has arguably executed the strategy and pitstops absolutely flawlessly across the first two races in IMSA and won both with the No.7 car, it’s the biggest difference between the two.

The BMW set the fastest lap in both races – Sheldon van der Linde in the No.25 car at Daytona and Vanthoor at Sebring – and took both poles.

There’s zero doubt over the speed at the moment, so it’s clear the execution is where the gains can come from.

That’s where his brother, Laurens, has gained as he’s won the first two races in the No.7 Porsche.

“I think it’s a proud moment that us two brothers from Belgium, which is a small, not really motorsport-biased country, are in it,” Vanthoor says.

“But at the moment, it’s also pissing me off, because he’s winning a lot of races. At the end, he’s also just a competitor like someone else. If you start to think too much about it, that it’s your brother, it’s just not going to work.

“It’s a cool moment for us to travel to those places all over the world together and racing for high, famous, cool manufacturers as BMW, as Porsche. So I think that’s just very cool, and we can be both very proud of each other, that we can say that it’s our job, and we made it to that point.”

Dries maybe a relative newcomer to this series in many ways, but he has impressed the paddock early in 2025, and given how quickly he learned Sebring – pole and fastest lap on first visit – learning new tracks through the rest of the year won’t be an issue…