Outgoing BMW motorsport boss Mike Krack holds out the prospect of a WEC commitment – The BMW LMDh bolide is also to go to customers in WEC and IMSA
BMW’s LMDh programme, which is limited to the IMSA GTP category for 2023, could be expanded in the future. The World Endurance Championship (WEC) is now a topic for 2024 after all, as Mike Krack explains. He himself will only hear about it from the outside due to his move to the Aston Martin Formula 1 team.
Krack states to that a factory programme in the 2024 WEC is “one of our options”. This is a turnaround, as up until now the WEC has not even featured in any BMW communiqués. The greatest interest, of course, is in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
While development is progressing in Italy in cooperation with Dallara, BMW already has to think about the future of the programme: “We will go through our strategy in the coming months. What are the next steps and what happens after 2023?” Of course, this is now happening under the leadership of Krack’s successor Andreas Roos.
Krack confirms that discussions are being held with the WEC organiser ACO: “When you look at a Le Mans programme, you have to talk to the ACO and commit for a certain period of time. All the elements have to be right for that. What does it mean to aim for the Le Mans win? So far there is no final decision. “
ideal scenario: customer cars in both series
A factory commitment with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing in the IMSA Sportscar Championship in 2023 is assured. For the time after that, there are various possibilities. BMW has meanwhile committed itself to one: The possibility of using customer vehicles, which was still cautiously communicated in 2021, is now a wishful scenario.
“Ideally, we would have one customer in IMSA and one in the WEC. With the LMDh philosophy, it would be wrong to enter only as a factory team. Of course, you need interested parties and you have to come to an agreement. We would already be happy if we could do it that way.”
A BMW spokeswoman tells , that there are currently no concrete talks with customers about this scenario. There would also then be a question mark over the factory commitment, as Krack said in June 2021 that BMW did not want to race against its own customers.
The compact schedule with the vehicle can be met so far. the rollout is scheduled for July 2022. “With all the delivery difficulties at the moment, I am very happy that we have been able to stick to the schedule so far,” Krack says. Meanwhile, he is not yet revealing anything about the engine.
