Bill Auberlen is a legend in endurance motorsport, winning races and championships with BMW in a career stretching back to 1987. From Redondo Beach in Southern California, Bill is a man of many talents: not only a top professional racing driver but also a designer and constructor of high performance boats. I caught up with Bill at the recent Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona and got his thoughts on the upcoming Long Beach Grand Prix. How did you get started in motorsport first as an interest, then as a career?OK, this is a really long story and I will try and make this as short as possible. Racing is not like football, basketball, or golf, where if those guys are good in high school they will be seen - all it takes is a ball and talent. Of course in motorsport, you have to be seen in a car, but it is a really tough place to get into. Everyone’s path is different, it is amazing but they all wind up trying to get into a race car. I got started because my Dad had a racer, real low level, and he allowed me the opportunity to drive it. Then I wanted so badly to keep doing it that I did fundraisers, anything to keep myself on the racetrack. I built my own engines, I had my own group of guys who kept me going, and eventually we got very good. You have to stay out on the track, you have to get better and better and better, and then, if you are one of the best, if you represent yourself well, hopefully a factory comes along and picks you up, and that’s the goal.A factory picking you up is basically what happened to you, so tell us how you made the transition from amateur to professional.I was running my own race program with a Mazda RX-7, tube-framed, crazy, a great car. BMW was racing against us and we were very, very competitive at the time, while BMW were struggling to get their first win. We had dialogue back and forth. I was basically telling them, “Hey, bring me onboard and I will leave the Mazda at home, and I will get you your first win.” Well, we were minutes away from the first victory and a technical problem hit just before the finish. The next race we brought BMW a 1-2-3 result and carried on winning, winning, winning after that. So that was my transition from being a privateer to a factory guy and I have had many successful years with BMW since then.You are a local, from just around the Palos Verdes Peninsula, in Redondo Beach. What are your first memories of the Long Beach Grand Prix? Did you see Formula One here on the streets?I was there when Formula One started. My Dad was a stockholder of the Long Beach Grand Prix from the first race, so we always got tickets to go there. In the early days we could get a motorhome in and put it right on the edge of the track.My first five, six, or ten years at the race were in a motor home watching close by. I was such a nerd at seven or eight years old, I had a tape recorder to record the cars. I would go home and listen to them and I could tell you which car was which by the sound of the engine. I just had a memory that I still have today, I wish I could find those tapes, I would love to hear them again. Gilles Villeneuve, JeanPierre Jabouille and all these crazy guys, guys that I looked up to when coming into the sport, it was an incredible time for race fans in Southern California.What is your best memory of the Long Beach Grand Prix?Well it has got to be 2013 when I finally won the race. I had raced there quite a few times in different types of cars - from GTs to Formula Atlantic - finished third, finished second, finished third, finished second and finally captured that victory in a very decisive, great way. The win was so appreciated by all my local friends and fans, we got to celebrate the victory all together, it was a really great moment in my career.Do you approach the sprint events like Long Beach in a different way than the endurance events such as the Sebring 12 Hours, either in or out of the car?Oh, sure. The shorter the race, the more intensely you approach it. Daytona, it is not a race in my mind till the sun comes up on Sunday morning. It is a marathon event, keeping your car in perfect condition, trying not be a part of all the accidents that are occurring with everyone taking themselves out. Those are the easiest passes to make when somebody else makes a mistake and crashes. You just drive as opposed to having to fight your way past. Rather than battle a guy at four in the afternoon the day before the event is over, and that guy is going to crash anyway and take myself out, I wait. Then in the morning we attack. Sometimes we might be a lap or two up and we don’t have to, that’s Daytona. Well, at the Long Beach Grand Prix you have just two hours to get the job done, you don’t have time to mess around. If there’s a guy in front of you, you gotta get by! Last year my teammate pushed so hard he was knocking mirrors off the car. This shows how close you are getting to the walls. You are driving as fast as you can, doing drifts, sliding to the wall, right to the curbs. Sometimes you cringe waiting for the sound of the car hitting the wall and you are doing this at full throttle, with one hundred percent commitment to try and get to that victory podium.The Long Beach Grand Prix is preceded in the city by a round of Formula Drift Championship. Have you tried drifting and what are your thoughts on this aspect of the sport?I have tried it. I try it when I have nothing to hit. It is a whole different ball game, the opposite of the discipline that we are taught; we’re trying to keep on the edge of perfect control, otherwise you abuse your tires. They are all about abusing their tires, smoking their tires, with a totally different definition of perfect control. They are sideways coming two inches away from the wall. I do drifting at the BMW factory in Spartanburg. At the plant there is a lot of room and we test at it and I can get it right, but drifting is an art and those people have crafted their art just like we do with our GT racing. It is so impressive to watch the blue smoke coming up, two guys side by side drifting, all that power unleashed, it is a fun spectacle. They run before us and lay down a huge amount of rubber and then we come in a week later and race in a different discipline, both exciting, both fun.What would you say is the highlight of your long and varied career - what made it special?It has changed, it really has changed. It used to be to win every event and I have pretty much done that for the most part. Now it is to win multiple events and then to set records that may not be broken. It is an evolving thing. I always thought if I could just get that first win I would be happy forever, but when you get there, it is then right on to the next objective. Now the next objective is to set the all-time record for most wins in the sport of sports-car racing. I am number two right now and I think I can achieve it. I also want to set the all-time record for poles, I think I am right up at the front. I also want to set the all-time record for GS Class wins and I am right there with that. These records are going to be in the books for a long time and to think that a little California kid that came from a German family has been able to achieve all that is such a good feeling. Of course it is not me, it is that I have such a good brand in BMW that has catapulted me to the victory podium and helped me achieve my goals.Which race car gave you the most satisfaction to drive and why?Well, the next one, it is always the next one. However, if we look historically, the BMW M3 GTR was fantastic, it was so far ahead of its time. We had so much in our hands, speed-wise, that it was crazy, then they outlawed that car after just one year. That is the greatest way to go racing, you know from the start that no one can keep up with you - it was the best. Of course there is also the BMW V12 LMR from 1999 and 2000 - it was a Picasso on the race track. It was a work of art not only from its looks. When it made its debut at Sebring I was floored, I could not believe how advanced it looked and how amazing it looked. Then there was the sound it made with the V12 BMW engine in the back, it really is a work of art, beyond words.You hold the height record in that car as well?The height and flip records as a matter of fact. It was a weird time when the aerodynamic rules said that you had to use a big flat bottom, no diffusers, no tunnels for downforce. There were a lot of times when guys would get too close to the car in front of them, they would lose all downforce off the nose and they would flip up into the air while running down the straight. I joined the Aviators Club at Road Atlanta in 2000. Up and over a couple of times, 30 feet in the air and it was an open cockpit car, so you can come down at the wrong time. Luckily it was going so fast that it went a complete 360°, came down on the wheels and broke them all off the car - it was a fun day.You are said to be the driver who has driven the most races for BMW as a professional, so what makes BMW special? What has been your best BMW moment?I am a very technical person. I love to see new technology come out and to have people that are so motivated by advancing an industry, whether it be in motor development or electronics development for the traction control, new brakes, new ways of making the chassis. This is what the BMW engineers do: they dream it, sleep it, wake up with it, design it and develop it, and they do it at a crazy pace. They never sit and rest on their laurels and then, for me, the fact that the idea was in someone’s brain a few months back, then he drew it up on the computer, then they spit out a part and it goes onto my race car. I am the first person to put that gas pedal down and feel the results of what was in someone’s head a few months ago. That is an amazing moment, especially when it always works.Is there a specific moment in your career when you remember experiencing the difference a new technology made?When they developed Traction Control or ABS. You cannot believe how tight the seat-belts had to be in a high downforce car with ABS - as soon as you stepped on the brake pedal it was trying to launch you out of the front windshield. You had to have full faith and trust that you could put 2,000 lbs of pressure on the system, and it would stop in an incredibly short space. Or when the engineers design the flicks and wings and gurneys and all of a sudden a corner that was not flat out at Elkhart Lake in 6th gear is now completely flat and trying to yank your neck off. You have to trust the designer that made the aerodynamic device that pushes the car so hard, you must have blind faith that it is going to work, and these do over and over again.When not racing for BMW how do you relax?I relax of course, but remember I used to have my own team before joining BMW. I have this desire to design and build my own stuff. I started my own company where I design and build propulsion units for boats - very, very high-tech, dry sump units that are really neat. I have a company that build boats, 190mph boats, I do the motors, the electronics, the stereo systems that are so elaborate that they would blow your mind. I design and draw up all the pieces in the boat, so I never like to rest. I take the technology that has been developed as cutting edge in race cars and put it in boats, which are ten years behind. I put it in there and it blows people’s minds. When you bring something so current over to a boat and they see that technology it moves things forward much quicker.Do you have any advice for someone who is looking to start in motorsport?OK, there are a couple of very decisive things that I would say. To get into racing you have to been seen, we already talked about that. It takes money or a sponsor or something to get you in that car. First, don’t ever bring your own money and look like you are a paying driver - because once a paying driver, always a paying driver. It is very hard to make the transition from “Hey that guy used to bring money, now he is Ayrton Senna, now we pay him.” If you control the money to get into a race car, then go through your sponsor and tell them to hire you, it makes you look like the hired gun. That’s my first point.Second of all, you are going to get to the point that anything coveted is difficult to achieve - if everyone could be Tom Cruise, that position would mean nothing. Anything worth having is very complicated so you get to the point where it gets difficult and you want to throw in the towel - that is the point where there is a weeding out of all the people who do not deserve to be there. And when you get to the point where you want to throw in the towel and you don’t want to do it any more, carry on. You have to go through that point, that is when you are going make a breakthrough. Very rarely does it happen before that point. You have to push through, you have to be committed, you have be great at more than just driving, you have to be great as a PR person. You have to put a smile on your face, you have to make people happy with the person you are, and you have to bring something specific to that team. Everyone has a niche, develop that niche. For instance I am very good technically so I can help with that aspect, Joey Hand is very good with shocks, he is the shocks specialist. Those niche points will elevate you above someone else, whether you are the marketing guru or anything else, get that niche and never stop. Once you are in it is much easier to stay in, but first you must get in.
