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Originally Posted by chunterer
Interesting thread, I often wondered as a lad, why BMW had entered IMSA with a major attack and then pulled out so quickly. Politics I assume, but it s a great 'what if' to think that if they'd done ok there, Bimmer might well have rolled out a Group C assault or something towards the end of the decade?
The car/engine/driver line ups were strong enough IIRC. Didn't one of the guys have a monumental shunt at Road America in one of them, was it Davy Jones or am I confusing that with another incident?
Have to say i'd forgotten the cars were later run as private cars with different engines.
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BMW threw a lot of money at this (I believe no less than 6 chassis for a programme that lasted barely a year!), but one significant factor in it's demise seems to have been the series of fires Fausto mentioned- two cars were lost to testing fires early season- the last 2 chassis were apparently supplied as replacements for the cars destroyed
According to Endurance Racing 1982-91 by Ian Briggs,
'after some time the cause of the fires was tracked down to the rear bodywork sagging down onto the exhaust pipes under high speed loads, but in the meantime, so bad had become the problem that BMW were forced to withdraw from the Daytona 24 hours season-opener. As the year went on, and trackside BMW bonfires became a feature of the GTP championship, BMW's marketing men began to worry about the company's image, which almost certainly led to the decision at the year end to leave expenive racing out of BMW's future Stateide marketing strategy....'