Team WRT is a welcome addition to the IMSA paddock for the 2026 season. The Belgian sportscar heavyweights are finishing their first year operating BMW’s GTP program in the WeatherTech Championship. After scoring three podiums – all in the first five races, WRT scored their first win last time out at Indianapolis.
GT REPORT spoke with WRT’s Team Principal, Vincent Vosse, at Petit Le Mans to discuss the win and the program as a whole. Vosse began by describing his elation for the win. “It’s a great feeling…to score a win in GTP. We came close a few times before, but it was time in Indianapolis.” Sheldon van der Linde chased down Earl Bamber and made the winning in the final ten minutes to score victory for he and Dries Vanthoor. The win was the first for BMW in over a year in GTP competition.
Learning As We Go
As mentioned earlier, there were podiums. There was, simultaneously, a lot of trial and error. “We just kept trying,” Vosse laments on the downs of the season. For Vosse, however, there is no buyers remorse in terms of approach. “We would not have done things differently.”
A New Challenge…A Difficult Challenge
The team, replacing Rahal Letterman Lanigan, is not the same team under the hood. Namely, this is not just the WEC team pulling double duty. “It’s a new team,” says Vosse. “A lot of then have been in IMSA and have the experience. Still, when you put a new group of people together, it takes time to click.” Some will argue that it did not take long at all. At Daytona, albeit with a hybrid crew of the new IMSA and existing WEC staff, the team podiumed on debut. Maybe the expectations were set too high? To each their own. What cannot be disputed is how far this team has come in such a short time. “We started last September (2025). You don’t just add a new program. We started from scratch. It was a bigger challenge than I expected. It was a difficult challenge but a good one.”
What’s Next?
With their first win now in the rearview mirror, Vosse now looks ahead to see how the team can build momentum. “We look to be more consistent,” Vosse says as the team’s biggest goal. “We have speed and possibility.” Unfortunately, the possibility ended in unrealized potential more often than not. Particularly, the early season was highlighted by bad luck for the duo of Philip Eng and Marco Wittman. Eventually, the podiums did come. In totality, however, their season screamed feast or famine. 2027 will be aimed to making sure those performances are cleaned up.
Vosse admits he is surprised, “I did not expect to win in our first season.” One thing is clear, this is no happy accident. A team the caliber of WRT has expectations. While this is a new adventure, the expectation is that results would come sooner rather than later. “(IMSA) is a different championship. The team name is the same, but we started something new.”
Rising Tide Lifts Both Ships
Vosse is already seeing how having a dual program is strengthening his team. “It is a big benefit for the program,” says Vosse. “The flow of information is much easier. In Fuji (for WEC), a strategic maneuver we used land on the podium was due to IMSA.”
Maybe BMW saw Porsche use the one-team, two-championships approach and considered if it would work for them. So far, the move is paying dividends. BMW is second in manufacturers standings in WEC with their driving team of Robin Frijins and Rene Rast still in driver’s championship contention. While the results in IMSA are not showing this season, they could appear down the road.
All season, there has been a notion by some that WRT and BMW could become a serious contender in the near future. If this team won at a time they did not think they would, imagine what can happen going forward. One thing at this time is certain, WRT has landed in America and they are making claim they may be here for a while.
Headline Photo: Vincent Vosse at the IMSA Road America Round – Photo Courtesy: WRT
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