GT racing “best fit” for BMW in Australia

The prestige brand yesterday announced that it is starting a factory and customer programme for the Australian GT Championship next year, with Steve Richards Motorsport to act as the factory agent and run a single works car.

The move rules out a V8 Supercars programme, at least in the short term, with Werner explaining that the brand new M6 GT3 made AGT the obvious solution for BMW Australia.

“BMW has a long history of competing in GT racing. We believe that GT racing is a rising sport in Australia, and we want to offer something for our customers,” said Werner.

“We want to start with GT customer racing first, and everything else remains to be seen. We believe that coming back into the Australian motorsport arena, GT racing is the best fit for us.

“We want to be successful in that. So we are starting in 2016 with a completely new approach, which I believe is unique. And we want to turn that into a success. Then we will see where we go from there.”

Werner also admitted that BMW had some preliminary discussions about V8s during 2015, but was not approached by the series itself.

“We’ve had initial discussions with a couple of opportunities that came up during the year,” he added.

“However, when we saw what was coming out of Europe, this global approach of GT customer racing, we said ‘this is the best fit for BMW Australia moving forward’.

“And that’s why we ruled out any other motorsports engagement. We truly believe this is the best way forward.”