BMW pulled off a barnstorming finish on the streets of Long Beach with the two new Z4 GTE machines taking a 1-2 result in the second round of the American Le Mans Series.

Bill Auberlen took the lead of the race with a pass on the SRT Viper of Dominik Farnbacher in the closing stages and the BMW Team RLL team made it a 1-2 several laps later when Dirk Muller also pulled off a move to grab second.

Pole winner Farnbacher was able to hold on to take the new SRT Viper’s first podium with Marc Goossens.

The victory by Auberlen and new BMW teammate Maxine Martin was remarkable considering the young Belgian lost a stack of time when he ran up the escape road at the end of the main straight and dropped to the tail of the field early in the race.

The error forced a switch in the BMW strategy which proved to be a winning move.

“This is great. I have footprints on the second and third place steps on that podium. It didn’t matter if we won or not, we were going to celebrate, but now. Wow, we’re going to celebrate,” Auberlen said.

“My new teammate Max (Maxine Martin) is fantastic. It’s nice to have confidence in a co-driver knowing he is so good. To have something that is brand new from BMW and have them finish 1-2 in the second race is about as good as it gets.

“This is my 18th year driving with BMW, so I’m just getting in to my stride and I’m just starting to drive fast. Thanks to Max, Michelin and their super great tires, and RLL, their strategy is always great.

“I was chasing the Viper and I finally got around him and I knew we were going to be tight on fuel. I knew it wasn’t an emergency to get him early, he was going to have to conserve. Either his tires were going to go away or he was going to run out of gas. So I took my time, waited for him to cook it and he did, then I slammed on the gas to get around him and didn’t look back.”