Bill Auberlen is so closely linked with BMW sports cars that it is easy to forget where he thought the road was heading in the early days. Growing up in Southern California, he chased the same ladder as plenty of other open wheel hopefuls, carving through Formula Atlantic with the usual dream in mind: IndyCar, ovals, the 500, the whole thing. The first real chance arrived in the mid nineties when Hogan Racing came calling with a three race IndyCar offer, the sort of deal young drivers usually grab with both hands and refuse to let go. On the other side of the table sat BMW, dangling something harder to ignore a full three year factory contract and a proper future in sports cars.
Auberlen chose the long road. Hogan’s part time seat eventually went to Dario Franchitti, who turned it into a frontline open wheel career, while Auberlen signed with BMW and never really looked back. It was not a decision taken lightly. Three races in IndyCar meant TV time, attention, the chance to show what he could do against the big names, but it also meant uncertainty about what happened afterwards. Three years with BMW offered security, resources and a clear path into major endurance programs. At the time he could not know that first contract would grow into a thirty year relationship, just that it gave him room to breathe in a business that rarely does.
The second brush with IndyCar came wrapped in even more intrigue. During BMW’s late nineties prototype push, Auberlen worked as a test driver on a howling V8 that was meant to do more than just win sports car races. The plan inside Munich was to take that engine, refine it and point it at America’s top open wheel series with Auberlen slotted in as the driver to carry it into IndyCar. The numbers were insane for the period; early tests had the motor turning around 11,500 rpm, making all the right noises but also making life miserable for anyone in charge of reliability. Blown engines became a way of life, each failure dragging rev limits lower until they were winning titles at 9000 rpm instead of chasing the moon.
On paper it looked like the path he had stepped away from with Hogan had looped back to him. Same driver, this time with a works engine program behind him rather than a customer seat. In reality, every step forward on the dyno exposed another problem. As BMW’s Le Mans Prototype programme gathered momentum and the LMR took shape, the appetite to keep hammering away at an IndyCar project shrank. The sports car programme was delivering trophies and headlines, while the open wheel plan demanded more investment and more patience. In the end the call was made to kill the IndyCar idea altogether, shelving the engine and with it Auberlen’s second shot at joining the grid.
Those two near misses ended up defining his career in a different way. Without a part time IndyCar distraction he poured himself into GT and prototype work, bouncing between machinery that ranged from BMW’s fastest ever LMP cars to GT3 and GT4 machines on the same weekend. There were years where he would qualify a Le Mans Prototype in one session and hop straight into a production based coupe in the next, adapting on the fly and racking up results. The consistency is what stands out now; wins at Daytona and Sebring, American Le Mans Series titles, World Challenge success and, eventually, the IMSA record for most career victories. The number keeps shifting upwards, but the story underpinning it remains the same.
Auberlen talks about those IndyCar almosts without bitterness. The Hogan offer could have put him on a different branch of the motorsport tree; the BMW engine project might have landed him there anyway with a factory badge on his overalls. Instead, both chances slipped away and he became the benchmark for longevity in North American sports cars, the guy everyone in the paddock measures themselves against when it comes to sheer mileage at the front. In a sense, the legend he built only exists because IndyCar never quite did. Twice the door opened, twice circumstances nudged him back towards BMW and endurance racing, and history will probably judge that as the right move.