BMW.SG | BMW Singapore Owners Community The Ultimate BMW Community – Established Since 2001
The BMW M3 Touring 24H delivered a fairytale debut at the 24 Hours of Nurburgring, taking fifth overall and a class win in SPX after starting life as nothing more than an April Fools’ gag. Built by BMW M Motorsport for the fans who refused to let the joke die, the wagon turned racer ran with the front-runners across the 24 hours in the Green Hell. The #99 BMW M4 GT3 EVO from ROWE Racing came home fourth, just shy of the rostrum, while a record 352,000 spectators watched the action unfold around the Nordschleife.
A top-ten result had been the stated dream inside BMW M Motorsport before the lights went out, so what followed had the paddock and the grandstands buzzing. Schubert Motorsport ran the wagon with Jens Klingmann, Connor De Phillippi, Ugo de Wilde and Neil Verhagen sharing driving duties, and the quartet wasted no time slotting into the leading pack. At various points, an overall podium looked genuinely on the cards before fifth place was sealed. The base machine was built in just eight months around the BMW M3 Touring road car, borrowing plenty of hardware from the BMW M4 GT3 EVO, and the brief was always a serious GT3-grade contender rather than a showpiece.
ROWE Racing fought hard for another podium but came up short this time around. Dan Harper, Max Hesse, Sheldon van der Linde and Dries Vanthoor recovered superbly from an early spin to seal fourth overall, which also brought second in the Intercontinental GT Challenge standings. The sister #1 BMW M4 GT3 EVO crewed by defending champions Augusto Farfus, Raffaele Marciello, Kelvin van der Linde and Jordan Pepper was forced out near 11 pm with a fuel system gremlin. Schubert Motorsport’s #77 BMW M4 GT3 EVO, piloted by Philipp Eng, Robin Frijns, Charles Weerts and Marco Wittmann, crossed the line ninth.
It was a productive weekend across the board for the marque, with BMW M Motorsport teams claiming eight class wins in total. Beyond the SPX victory for the wagon, silverware came home with the BMW M4 GT4 EVO in SP10, the BMW M2 Racing in the BMW class, the BMW M240i Racing in its own category, the BMW 330i in VT2 Rear, the BMW 325i, BMW 325CI in SP4 and the BMW 318ti in SP3. Andreas Roos, Head of BMW M Motorsport, acknowledged Mercedes-AMG had set the pace this year but pointed to three of four flagship entries finishing in the top ten as a strong return, with sights already set on a 22nd overall win next time out.
For the drivers behind the wheel of the #81 BMW M3 Touring 24H, the weekend carried real emotional weight. Klingmann called the result the climax of the whole project, while De Phillippi praised a flawless run with no mistakes from anyone involved. Verhagen reckoned the wagon would go down in history as one of the coolest machines ever to race the Nordschleife, and de Wilde admitted he was choked up knowing the car’s competitive life on that circuit was now drawing to a close. The wagon will continue to appear at selected events going forward, a fitting second act for what began as a punchline.
