BMW Team RLL will exist for at least two more years.
The German car giant and the traditional American racing team has worked together since 2009, where they have competed in GT2, moving into GTLM.
2021 has been very reduced for the team, since they didn’t receive the funds to run the full IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season, but only the four endurance rounds.
That will change for 2022, where the team will run two brand new BMW M4 GT3 cars in the new GTD Pro category, which replaces GTLM. The car has been tested in Europe for quite some time, and has had a few race starts, without being fully GT3 homologated so far.
Photo: BMW Motorsport/Martin Hangen/hangenfoto
The big dangling carrot in front of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing is 2023, with the team being the partner in the brand new BMW M LMDh programme in the IMSA series. Some of 2022 will be used for testing the new car as well.
The car will be built in collaboration with Dallara, and will comply with the brand new LMDh regulations, which makes it possible for the car to compete in both IMSA, the FIA World Endurance Championship, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. There is no official confirmation from BMW about FIA WEC of the French 24 hours race yet – but RLL has previously raced there with the M3 GT2 model in 2010 and 2011.
Graphics: BMW Motorsport
The information about the BMW M LMDh model has been very limited so far, but they have released the graphic above, together with the press release.
The change to the BMW M4 GT3 model is the end to the BMW M8 GTE model, which never really got the success that BMW had hoped for. They won some races here and there, but never managed to clinch any championship titles, other than the Michelin Endurance Cup in 2020, counting the four long races in the season – Daytona, Sebring, Watkins Glen and Petit Le Mans.
There is no news yet about the drivers for 2022 nor 2023, but BMW is usually holding on to their drivers for a long time, so expect to see some well-known faces.
