BMW has officially announced that it plans to return to the DTM (German Touring Car Masters) series in 2012 with the M3 if the requirements by the organizer ITR can be met. In the mean time BMW will make necessary technical preparations as the final verdict will be revealed at the end of the year.
BMW was part of the series in the past and wishes to make a come back as the series has been restructured. “The newly aligned programme offers us many important stages, on which to demonstrate the sporting gene present in BMW vehicles. The planned return to the DTM is an exciting challenge for our team,” said BMW Motorsport Director Mario Theissen.
“Over the coming months we will be making all the necessary technical preparations that should allow us to be competitive right from the start should we join the series in 2012. Thanks to its great tradition in production car racing, the BMW M3 is predestined to be used as the basic car. In 2011 we will once again be lining up with our BMW M3 GT2, which is contesting its debut season in Europe this year,” he added.
The company also said that it is developing a force-inducted 1.6 litre 4-cylinder engine with direct injection for 2011. This engine will be used in championships that run the Super2000 rules such as the World Touring Car Championship.
If BMW joins DTM it will race alongside its German rivals such as Mercedes-Benz and Audi. DTM started in 1984 and it was temporarily discontinued in 1996 due to high costs. It then made a return in 2000.
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Good news.. I hope Opel comes back as well and we can have a battle of the german throne.
Wish F1 cars look more or less like these…..resemble more towards road car instead of the current airplane wt wheels. More relevance to the car company…..Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday …that be great!
That’s a good news, although the current DTM is essentially , not really a production based racing series. The cars were made to look like derived from production car, but underneath the carbonfibre skin are purpose built spaceframe chassis and V8 race engines. More like Germany’s own NASCAR. Hopefully DTM should comeback to it’s original ‘genuine’ production based roots, like in the late 1980s & early 1990s…
At least they don’t race around a circle… like a dog chasing it’s own tail.
but huge following for those oval racing….guess those US ppl prefer on the track action compared to the rest of the world F1 fans whom maybe prefer to watch who made the fastest pit stop & made a better strategy in numbers of stop instead of actualy passing each other & neck to neck racing … ; )
Guess you’ve never watched a DTM race before… nor you know what is a WTCC.
proton had involved in BTCC, right?
yup..but this is dtm…not btcc…
i wish not only beemer make a comeback..hopefully opel and alfa romeo as well make a comeback…i wish to see alfa compete with those germans in dtm like back to early 90’s
audi rules dtm…
audi rules le-mans…
but bm…might prove as a worthy rival
with W or w/o W?