The triple DTM champion believes that the victory achieved by Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Andre Lotterer for Porsche Penske Motorsport within the Qatar 1812km season-opener provides BMW “hope” within the first yr of its WEC programme with the M Hybrid V8 run by WRT.
However he confused that following a greatest results of tenth on the Losail Worldwide Circuit, promoted into the factors by Cadillac’s disqualification, BMW nonetheless has work to do.
Requested by Autosport for his views on the affect Porsche’s victory has had on the BMW camp, Rast stated: “It undoubtedly provides hope as a result of you possibly can see that the LMDh automobile truly can battle for general victory, we’re the identical automobile class roughly, so the potential is there.
“However in all probability we’d like a bit extra time.
“Our take a look at programme within the winter or final yr for this season was a bit compromised attributable to quite a lot of climate. I’m not saying that that is the explanation, however we weren’t very fortunate with the climate situations and didn’t do quite a lot of dry working.
“Each take a look at we get now in dry situations helps so much to simply make one other step.
“Despite the fact that it’s only for driver consolation or extra consistency within the automobile, that helps already. We simply want extra time and extra testing to get on that stage.”
Picture by: JEP / Motorsport Images
BMW Motorsport boss Andreas Roos additionally urged warning on the Bavarian marque’s first WEC programme since its M8 GTE contested the GTE Professional class within the 2018-19 ‘superseason’ with the MTEK squad.
The M Hybrid V8 makes use of the identical spec rear axle hybrid system as Porsche’s 963, and was raced within the IMSA SportsCar Championship final yr by the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing squad, however Roos pointed to the a number of operational variations between IMSA and the WEC to justify a necessity “to be lifelike”.
“Now we have all of the substances that we’d like,” he stated.
“However whether or not we will extract every thing from these substances, that’s the query. We nonetheless have quite a lot of work to do, we’re not the place we need to be.
“Qatar for certain didn’t go as everybody wished, but it surely was our first race within the championship. It was additionally the primary time WRT was working the automobiles below race situations.
“We discovered so much, however we nonetheless have to enhance so much.”
WRT boss Vincent Vosse expressed optimism that the crew is “stepping into the suitable course” following its commencement as champion of the LMP2 class that was dropped from the championship this yr.
“If you happen to got here to the field throughout the race at Qatar, it was a traditional race, nothing hectic,” he informed Autosport.
“The drivers weren’t complaining concerning the automobile, it was not like we had been having massive points. I’ve to say it’s a part of the method.
“I keep in mind a type of groups that I’ve quite a lot of respect for, Penske is an efficient instance, the primary three or 4 races [in 2023], they struggled.
“We had been saying that isn’t what we had been anticipating from Porsche and Penske. That proves it takes time.”