Revealed: BMW M3 LeMans car

Have Roger Penske own and run the series.

I'd love to drive that to work for a week!

This will run in the GT2 class, the Audi's will lap it several times in a race.

The only touringcar series where BMW currently is competitive is the WTCC where they race against FWD Seat's and Chevrolets.

Obviously you know nothing about ALMS or how Le Mans functions or is set up to make such dumb comments. Nothing wrong with Peugeot as they are a well know company globally. Your fanboy bias is almost funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

btw, bmw isn't just competitive in wtcc, it's been dominating the series for several years now.

bmw also dominates in swedish touring car, italian touring car, asian touring car. whereas audi is only competitive in dtm of all touring car championships.

Audi has dominated the euro touringcar series the whole 90's, but because the Audi quattro's where so dominant they where banned.

before the new dtm series, between 1984-1996, manufacturers that won the most championships are bmw and mercedes-benz.

the list goes:
bmw and mercedes-benz won 3 championships each
audi 2
volvo 1
ford 1
alfa romeo 1
opel 1

as a matter of fact, it was mercedes-benz who actually dominated in the 90s, not audi.

also, as to why all wheel drive isn't allowed in dtm, the truth is that it doesn't really matter what kind of drive the cars have.

you see, dtm utilizes specially made space-frames in their cars, whereas other touring car championships require standard body shells from production cars. these special space-frames in dtm cars are nothing like the frame in the production cars they resemble. they also allow purpose built v8 race engines up to 4000cc in displacement.

in other words, race cars in dtm are much more like the purpose-built, built-to-spec race cars in nascar than race cars in the old dtm. the new dtm rules governing the specs of the race cars provide a common playground amongst the competition, sorta like nascar. and the governing body decided on rear wheel drive to discourage advantages or disadvantages from varying drivetrain dynamics. that's why they had to go with rear wheel drive only.

besides, audi's quattro didn't dominate the old dtm, so there's no reason for us to speculate that quattro would have dominated the new dtm if they had allow all-wheel-drive.

i don't remember anything recently whether BMW dominated their homeland touring car competition . Maybe its too competitive for BMW...going head to head with mercedes. maybe need to make some impact first at F1 against mercedes, ferrari and RENAULT???

DTM in the eary nineties was a production car based series unlike the modern day DTM.
It's there and many other touringcar championships where Audi dominated with their quattro's.

Audi was actually the first manufacterer in DTM who won the championship 2 times in a row, after that they where seriously handicapped and eventually banned because of the AWD dominance.

After that they entered multiple european supertouring series were again they dominated and where also eventually banned.

audi didn't get banned for their 4wd system. in fact 4wd was still used year after year after audi left dtm. audi actually left after failing to defend their title and realizing their flat plate v8 was receiving too much heat from fellow competitors who only had inline 4s. in 1993, the maximum cylinders was restricted to 6.

you see, audi won the 2 years because they had double the cylinders of its competitors, a crankshaft that was borderline illegal and simply more power than its competitors.

if anything, audi should have stayed in the series with a v6 and show the world how good 4wd is on the tracks, since there's absolutely no reason why audi couldn't compete in the dtm under class 1 regulations other than the presumption that audi wouldn't be competitive under new regulations.

First of all, I do not think Audi ran in the DTM in the 80s or the 90s. They were doing Rally driving where they dominated and then the quattro was banned. Audi has been racing DTM more in the last decade.

?

quattro was never banned in rally. why would they ban an all-wheel-drive system in rally?

it was actually the opposite - fisa started allowing all-wheel-drive system because audi developed quattro.

Neither funny nor intelligent.

Your idiotic anti-Lexus postings seem to work better in discussions where Lexus is the actual subject at hand.

I thought it was funny.

This will make the series more interesting to watch.

On a side note, it looks like the Aston-Martin DBR9 is finally giving the Corvette some competition in the GT1 class.

now take some iteration of that engine and weight savings and bring out the M3 CSL...

yea, imagine that on the streets... mind-blowing...

This looks like an excellent entry to the ALMS. I hope that the additional competition pulls more couch drivers to tune in instead of watching the same old boring NASCAR crap that Speedvision advertises incessantly.

Will Nissan and Lexus join the fray?

Sweet. The new M3 is excellent in all aspects, in all body styles, with either transmission option.

THe E46 GTR was for V8 homologation purposes, but seeing as the E92 M3 already has a V8 i guess taht won't be necesarry.

Aren't "Rosko2" and "MThree" bed chums or something along those lines ?

I never new BMW entered lemans with the M3.

did someone say nissan? I now someone is going to deboost this but oh well...GTR need i say more?