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The Bavarian marque is heavily invested in motorsport, this year returning to the FIA World Endurance Championship with the M Hybrid V8 which debuted in the IMSA SportsCar Championship in 2023.
It is also officially involved in a Supercars event of sorts, with Team WRT once again fielding two M4 GT3s on its behalf in the Bathurst 12 Hour, where BMW now also supplies the XM PHEV SUV as the Safety Car.
Asked by Speedcafe if there is any interest in racing in Supercars, Andreas Roos, Head of BMW M Motorsport, said he is a fan personally but that it does not currently fit with the marque’s strategy.
“I mean, not at the moment, but it’s generally always a process where, as BMW, we always scan what’s going on worldwide in motorsport,” he explained.
“For sure, you always come past the V8 Supercars and your championship in Australia because, at the end, it’s a fascinating championship, it’s very good races, there are also a lot of very good drivers which come out of this championship, and it’s very competitive.
“For sure, it’s always something you look at, but also you have to have the right car and the right model which fits into it and fits into your brand strategy, how you want to communicate and how you want to do your marketing.
“So, we for sure always look at it and, maybe at one time, the door opens and it would be interesting.
“But, at the moment, it’s not fitting, let’s say, exactly to our brand strategy, and this is why we have to see how we look.
“But definitely, it’s a very interesting championship and, especially as a motorsport fan, you will always look at it and look at the fascinating races.
“For me personally, I love it, but you have to see how it fits in your global brand strategy.”
While Supercars has necessarily moved on from racing cars based on road vehicles sold (practically or actually) in a single, relatively small market, it remains a bespoke category.
The M4 essentially matches the size and shape of the Ford Mustang road car, meaning it ticks at least one box for Gen3, but the Blue Oval has a naturally-aspirated V8 which its global CEO, Jim Farley, credited just last month for underpinning the enormous breadth of its motorsport programmes.
Roos highlighted powertrains as one sticking point, while also noting that its GT3 and GT4 race cars – and even the hypercar, thanks to the convergence of WEC and IMSA regulations – have global applications.
Ultimately, BMW’s decision to move into a motorsport category is based on road relevance and/or technology transfer.
“We have to look on the topic also in terms of sustainability, and what is very important for us is the road relevance,” he said.
“It has to be road-relevant. A simple example; the BMW M hybrid V8. It’s a V8 with a hybrid; when you look at our BMW XM [the aforementioned Safety Car], it’s a V8 hybrid; when you look at what’s coming soon, you will see other cars with a V8 hybrid.
“For sure, we all know that it’s not exactly one-to-one, the same drivetrain, but it’s how you work and how you develop and how you communicate and this link you have to have.
“We start with M2 CS Racing, which is basically a road car with a safety structure; then we have the GT4, which is basically our M4 car how you can buy it on the on the road; and we have a bit heavily modified, let’s say, the GT3 car which is still based on the on the road car; and then we have the prototype, the hypercar.
“What is nice with the GT4, GT3 car, it’s a car you develop once and you can run worldwide all over the world.
“It’s always more difficult when you have to develop cars for specific championships; then there must be clearly the asset for something, like the regulations fit perfectly to your road car or the technology fits or whatever.
“I think that the times are a bit over in motorsport where you just develop a car because it’s fascinating and you like the championship.
“It’s more about the holistic view to how it fits into the whole brand and brand strategy.”
BMW will be in action at Mount Panorama this weekend with Team WRT to field two M4 GT3s in the Bathurst 12 Hour.
Valentino Rossi is back again in Car #46, which he shares with Maxime Martin and Raffaele Marciello, who has moved across from Mercedes-AMG to race in BMW programmes including WEC.
The sister entry, which finished fourth outright at The Mountain in 2023, will again be steered by Sheldon van der Linde, 2018 race winner Dries Vanthoor, and Charles Weerts.
Practice 1 starts on Friday at 08:15 local time/AEDT.
