BMW - Why withdraw?

[tje23]

I'm not a BMW fan, in fact much more of an Aston Martin Racing Supported (cue reliability jokes, but just look at the Vantage GT2) - Anyway: Why are BMW not competing in the WEC? ALMS and DTM have extremely specific target audiences, and somehow I doubt there are many people in Germany who don't consider a BMW car, so is it not a wasted marketing opportunity, limiting themselves to DTM? Even more concerning is the fact this could possibly be the beginning of a further decline in GT manufacturers entering - and GT2 appears to be faltering now too! Hopefully some new works teams like the AMR GTE squad next year should start to fix this!

[Aysedasi]

Further decline in GT manufacturers......?


No, I'm going to be good and put this thread on ignore!

[Fogelhund]

It isn't as if the WEC has much of an audience at this point... Perhaps more geographically dispersed, but not larger. The ALMS ROI has shrunk to nearly invisible, and I'd suggest this is the last year for them, before they move to DTM North America. Budgets for racing are not limitless.... they'll continue with the M3 in DTM, and the Z4 in GT3.

[AGD]

BMW's history shows that they don't always stick around for very long. There's always that. They seem to want to get involved with the DTM. Audi and Mercedes are in the DTM so it kind of makes sense for the same reason why the Big 3 are in NASCAR. Plus, DTM has global aspirations. In terms of the WEC specifically, I believe it was BMW racing director Marquardt who said that he was very disappointed with the lack of coverage of the GTE-Pro class during ILMC telecasts. That is a fair point as the ILMC/ACO TV director seems obsessed with showing the leading LMP1s (and their team bosses' bald heads) nonstop. The fact that ILMC GTE-Pro was pretty weak did not help. So far, there aren't many signs that WEC GTE-Pro will be much better. Marquardt (I think) also said that he liked the ALMS streaming coverage better in comparison, but the ALMS program may not be long for the world either. I believe RLL is picking up more of the tab this year than in the past.

[lms]

heres another question: why there arent any private teams using bmw gt2

[Fogelhund]

Originally Posted by lms

heres another question: why there arent any private teams using bmw gt2

a) I don't know if they are available for sale, there certainly has never been mention.

b) Why compete against a factory backed effort, when you will never win.

See, Corvette in ALMS, no privateer Vettes, despite cars being available. See Ferrari and Porsche, who will support privateers, including FLM (some more than others), but at the end of the day, they aren't pure factory teams.

[lms]

Originally Posted by Fogelhund

a) I don't know if they are available for sale, there certainly has never been mention.

b) Why compete against a factory backed effort, when you will never win.

you mean private bmw vs factory bmw? I thought there wont be any factory bmw in wec next year, the schnitzer team will focus on dtm.
or private bmw vs other factory gt teams? like corvette...

[wewantourdarbyback]

I would guess they want to pour the funds into the DTM for their return. An uncompetitive return to their national series would be a bit of a disaster for them.

[Simmi]

There's still a way they can have their cake and eat it by lending a helping hand to any team who wants to run the cars. With a bit of works support there's no reason they couldn't win WEC races or even Le Mans next year with fairly minimal investment on an already well-sorted car.

There were rumours about this happening but nothing more. They'd be daft not to be considering it.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by wewantourdarbyback

I would guess they want to pour the funds into the DTM for their return. An uncompetitive return to their national series would be a bit of a disaster for them.

DTM offers the right kind and more exposure than this new championship. Maybe it will grow, and has some potential, but at the moment DTM offers what they want and funds aren't limitless.

[Acid09]

Originally Posted by Simmi

There were rumours about this happening but nothing more. They'd be daft not to be considering it.

There have been rumors ever since the car started running, it was the same with the M3 E46 GTR as well. In the end, these cars never end up in the hands of customers which leads me to believe that BMW has no genuine interest in selling them.

Word was that the current M3 is by far the most complicated and pricy GTE machine and I guess BMW would only hand these cars to a big enough team that has the resources to make them work.

The reason for the WEC no-show is simple, there's no works team for the effort. Schnitzer is moving to DTM and even without the clashes they would never do both. Competition in DTM is very close and BMW has to catch up on Audi and Mercedes, it's something you can't do half-arsed or it'll be a failure.

And talking about exposure, BMW is much much better off with the DTM, at least in Germany. The ILMC programme was hardly visible in Germany, now there are almost daily news stories on which drivers they´re going to pick etc.

Needless to say, the races are being broadcast on one of the biggest TV stations here so in terms of visibility, it's absolutely no comparison. In fact, this kind of exposure is the main reason for the DTM's very existence, it's a promo vehicle for the involved manufacturers.

[rich07]

Originally Posted by lms

heres another question: why there arent any private teams using bmw gt2

One factor could be that the car is expensive to buy and run compared to some of the other GT alternatives. Although with the 2012 Porsche RSR rumoured to cost 500,000 euro then I guess the BMW would be on that level.

[Jameson]

Originally Posted by rich07

One factor could be that the car is expensive to buy and run compared to some of the other GT alternatives. Although with the 2012 Porsche RSR rumoured to cost 500,000 euro then I guess the BMW would be on that level.

The thing is that nobody seems to know how much the M3 would cost to buy and especially to run. A factory will approach this kind of project (building and developing a GTE car) very differently if it's meant to be run by customer teams (like Porsche, Ferrari) or if it's meant to be run only by works team(s). Now, when they have decided to concentrate on DTM + let RLL continue in ALMS it would probably require too much work & investment to get to a point where they can efficiently support a new customer team in WEC.

Having said that, I would not be completely surprised if that kind of team would emerge at some point in the near future, although if I had to bet on it, I'd say they do only ALMS.

[rich07]

Originally Posted by Jameson

Having said that, I would not be completely surprised if that kind of team would emerge at some point in the near future, although if I had to bet on it, I'd say they do only ALMS.

I think your right there, I cant see anyone in Europe running an M3 except maybe at a stretch Schubert but they're wrapped up in the Z4 Gt3 so thats very highly unlikely. Rumours of Black Swan maybe running a car in ALMS but havent heard anything more.

[Tom908V12]

Originally Posted by Acid09

...
And talking about exposure, BMW is much much better off with the DTM, at least in Germany. The ILMC programme was hardly visible in Germany, now there are almost daily news stories on which drivers they´re going to pick etc.

Nee.

What ??? Despite the big presence of AUDI in LMP1, the championship wasn't covered by the german medias ???

[Acid09]

Originally Posted by Tom908V12

What ??? Despite the big presence of AUDI in LMP1, the championship wasn't covered by the german medias ???

Aside from page 3 articles in motorsport magazines and coverage on Eurosport? No.

That's not news, despite the fact that Audi has been dominating Le Mans for over a decade interest in the race is very slim here because the media is absolutely not interested in it.

There's zero coverage of Le Mans on mainstream tv channels, not even the start & finish is shown anywhere but Eurosport and I can't recall a single time Audi's wins have made the evening news.

[Speed-King]

Well, it's not quite as bad - e.g. I remember a Le Mans story (big picture, little text) on the front page of the sports section of the Süddeutsche Zeitung...

But the last time LM really made the evening news was when the Mercedeses went flying in 1999. Might be that McNish and Rockefeller's crashes made it this year as well, but I didn't have a TV at the time. And having crashes on the news is of course something fundamentally different to the media actually caring about the race...

[Thaw Daggerslash]

The way BMW goes racing has always striked me as being very odd.

It seems to be like they hold this very strange view that if they're not winning consistenly week in, week out, and the rules don't suit their cars to the nth degree, then they withdraw from whatever form of racing it is they're in, be it F1, WTCC, GT...

I find it hard to understand the logic of them putting their entire effort behind DTM, because surely they have just as good if not better chance of winning in other categories.

I'll make this prophecy though - if they haven't won the DTM title in three years, they'll probably pull out.

[FordCosworthPanoz]

GT is becoming more of a customer car affair than LMP1 or series like DTM. BMW can still compete in races like the Nurburgring 24h with their GT3 car while getting more ROI through sales to teams than they would with GTE. Not to mention DTM seems to get much bigger crowds and attention in Europe than the non-LM24 WEC/ILMC races. Plus Germany is a country of81,702,329 people, so their local market is still massive and DTM is the place to be for that.

As AGD says, everybody except Audi and Peugeot get hardly any coverage even when their race is more exciting. Olivier Quesnel and Dr Ullrich probably got more television time than the entire GT field this year. I simply think it all boils down to overall ROI, plus they can still have a sports car racing presence with the BMW Z4 GT3.

[Speed-King]

I think about the only way to really popularize the WEC in Germany would be to return to a setup like in the 70s when the same cars and teams ran in WEC and the DRM.

Chances for this happening are of course slim to non-existant, but I'd love DTM to be an LMP-sprint series...

[Acid09]

Originally Posted by Thaw Daggerslash

The way BMW goes racing has always striked me as being very odd.

It seems to be like they hold this very strange view that if they're not winning consistenly week in, week out, and the rules don't suit their cars to the nth degree, then they withdraw from whatever form of racing it is they're in, be it F1, WTCC, GT...

I find it hard to understand the logic of them putting their entire effort behind DTM, because surely they have just as good if not better chance of winning in other categories.

I'll make this prophecy though - if they haven't won the DTM title in three years, they'll probably pull out.

What you describe is the way Mercedes does racing, actually, not BMW.

I really don't see why it's so hard to understand that BMW does DTM now. It gives them the maximum of exposure non-F1 racing can get in Germany... the DTM has way more media presence than the WEC.

BMW has complained a lot about how GTE was not very visible in Le Mans this year. It was a particularly hard year for sure for the GTEs, given that the P1 battle was this exciting.

They´re looking to maximize their exposure and DTM is the way to go outside of F1, in Germany that is.

[Speed-King]

in Germany that is.

Not to forget Austria ands maybe Switzerland - both of which don't really have a homegrown series themselves.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by Acid09

What you describe is the way Mercedes does racing, actually, not BMW.

Except that Mercedes has been in F1 and DTM, win or lose, for years and years now? (Not that I think the example is fair to BMW really).

They only went into Sportscar for a brief time at the end of the '90s, but then so did everyone else!

[FIRE]

Well BMW took part in touring car racing year after year. When I started watching motorsport (early 90s) they raced with BMW 3-Series and they did officially until last year. You can't blame them for doing something else. In my opinion it's good to switch series after a decade or so. On that way the brand get's a new audience. For example it would be good for Ford to do something else as rally.

One of the reasons I like BMW is because they care about customer racing. Okay we didn't see any M3 GTR's in customer hands but from club racing to professional racing there are teams running BMW's. It's also one of the reasons I don't like Mercedes. Until the introduction of the GT3 they were to arrogant and didn't care about customers.