British GT ace Alexander Sims joined the BMW Team SRM squad to aid its preparations for next weekend’s Australian Endurance Championship meeting at Phillip Island.

The factory BMW GT driver made a flying visit to the Victorian circuit to lend his support to the BMW Australia backed M6 GT3 entry piloted by Steven Richards and Max Twigg.

Sims jumped behind the wheel at the Phillip Island test to help steer the squad’s set-up direction ahead of the Australian GT meeting at the venue from May 27-29.

The 28-year-old currently competes for the Rowe Racing BMW squad in the Blancpain GT Series.

“The team here in Australia is still in the early stages of learning the car, so today was about fact-finding,” said Sims.

“It’s about trying to transfer as much information from my experience, and from the BMW engineer’s experience, gained during the development stages and races we’ve completed over the last 10 months in Europe.

“The raw speed of the car is very good. We’ve done six race weekends on the bounce, every single weekend, over the last six weeks in Europe, so we’ve had a very intense learning period.

“The biggest thing we’ve overcome is optimising the package for each race weekend during practice sessions. At the start, it took us a bit too long – but now we have fast-tracked that and we can be in a good position for qualifying.

“The aim is to speed up that learning phase for the guys here.”

As previously reported, Sims will be on hand to assist the MARC GT squad with its new M6 GT3 entry at their shakedown test at Queensland Raceway on Friday.