BMW fans had reason to rejoice on Friday at Circuit of the Americas with Alex Simms leading John Edwards in a 1-2 result in the second practice in round four of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

Simms stopped the clocks at 2:03.703 to be .4 of a second ahead of his teammate.

Porsche racer Laurens Vanthoor was third fastest ahead of Giancarolo Fisichella’s Ferrari and Dirk Werner’s Porsche.

The BMW squad are not getting excited as yet. The Bobby Rahal-led team are working hard to try to get the German brand back to victory lane for the first time since 2015 at Long Beach.

“It’s just practice, but it’s going in the right direction it seems,” Simms said.

“I’m not sure what everyone else is working on running, and come qualifying there’s a chance we won’t be in this position, but the car is working quite well around here. I wouldn’t put it down to any one thing, so we’ll just keep working.

“We’ll just keep our heads down and keep plugging on, try to do the same job tomorrow. Then we’ll see where we end up on race day, when it matters.”

BMW were also strong in the first session this morning setting the second and fourth fastest times in the GTLM class. Dirk Mueller and Joey Hand’s Ford topped the times in the morning run.

Other class leaders in the afternoon included Jordan Taylor in Prototypes, James French in PC and Tristan Vautier in GT Daytona.

Teams are back on track tomorrow morning at 8:55am for final practice.