select with a wildcard

So I've got this internal table i_tab. One of the values for field1 of i_tab could be 'VP*'.

Afterwards, they do a select:

select cretime

into table i_table

from apqi

for all entries in i_tab

where groupid eq i_tab-field1.

Of course, nothing shows up, because the * is supposed to be a wildcard, and there is no groupid 'VP'. How can I make a selection so that the wildcard works? (Every groupid that starts with VP?) I can't change the * to a %.