BMW’s one and only Le Mans win | Thank Frankel it’s Friday

It's remarkable how much can safely be deduced from such a slender sliver of information. Given the picture and that BMW has raced common-or-garden GT cars very recently, it’s safe to say the car is a prototype. But there are LMDh prototypes – such as those that will be raced by Porsche, Audi, Acura and, in all likelihood, Cadillac, and slightly less off-the-peg LMH prototypes such as those that will be raced by Ferrari, Toyota, Peugeot and others. The giveaway is that little word ‘Daytona’, because that means the IMSA North American championship in which LMH cars are not allowed to compete. So it’s an LMDh car, then, which limits competitor’s choice to one of four proprietary chassis, a spec hybrid system, very precise dimensions and weight and a fixed drag to downforce ratio.

So does this mean the BMW will not race in Europe, at Le Mans and elsewhere around the world? By no means: IMSA may not like the LMHs, but the World Endurance Championship has no problem with LMDhs. So while BMW has not said it’s going to bring the new car to Le Mans, can you see it ducking the biggest prize in motor-racing and letting its most deadly rivals have a clearer run at the title? Me neither. I am strongly of the view that the real reason BMW has chosen LMDh is precisely because it allows the team to race everywhere, and that we should read no more into that Daytona proclamation beyond it being the earliest event in either series’ 2023 calendars.

So it seems that sportscar racing, have gone through one of its periodic sojourns in the doldrums is soon to enter a new golden era. Or at least that’s how it’s looking to me right now.

But 2023 is a still a distance away so let’s for now look briefly in the other direction, back to 1999. And it has always struck me as short sighted that BMW’s only true Le Mans Prototype programme was so brief, because I just don’t think people remember one time winners of Le Mans, certainly not relative to those who ram the point home again and again over the years, as have marques like Bentley, Jaguar, Ferrari, Ford, Porsche and Audi. There are exceptions, most notably Aston Martin which spent the entire 1950s trying to win Le Mans, finally managing it in the last race of the decade. But it has been able to dine out on that single victory in recent years because its GT programme has been part of the Le Mans furniture for the last 16 years. By contrast BMW’s M8 GTE raced there in 2018 and 2019, came away with nothing to show for its efforts, and that was that.

But it wasn’t a lack of success that turned BMW against sportscars racing after 1999. The team’s first prototype was the 1998 V12 LM, designed and engineered by Williams and featuring a downsized 6.0-litre version of the V12 engine that had won Le Mans in 1995 in the back of a McLaren F1. But in France the two cars were off the pace of the best Porsches, Mercedes and Toyota in practice and both broke ignominiously early in the race.

So, and fair play to them, the team went away and designed an almost entirely new car for the following season. In qualifying the quicker of its two cars was third instead of sixth the year before, faster than everything out there save the ridiculously rapid Toyota GT-Ones, and even then the gap to pole was just 1.3 seconds, opposed to 3.5 seconds the year before.

Sadly it is a race remembered far more for airborne Mercedes than the cracking BMW-Toyota battle that played out in the final hours. Both teams were down to just one car and while the BMW was leading, the Toyota was hauling it in, Ukyo Katayama smashing the lap record as he gained on the BMW. The race was decided by a typical slice of Toyota bad luck at Le Mans – a puncture – which saw the car limp back to the pits for new rubber while the BMW streaked into an unassailable lead.

Why did BMW not come back and establish itself among the great Le Mans teams? Simply because it had decided long ago to enter Formula 1 as an engine supplier as part of its long term contract with Williams. Would the V12 LMR have been able to take on what would become the all-conquering Audi R8? We’ll never know but I expect it would have been a tough call. So let’s just hope that this time around BMW not only does well, but hangs around long enough to really make it count.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.