BMW Needs to Take the i8 Racing
Any time a BMW goes racing is a good time. The marque is so deeply ingrained in motorsports that you really can’t talk about any form of motorsports without at least mentioning BMW. It’s a great marketing tool for the brand. It shows that they truly are the “Ultimate Driving Machine”.
Right now, though, the brand really only has a few cars running in motorsports actually sponsored by the company. But hopefully all of that will change if this concept comes to reality. What you are looking at is an i8 racer. It looks brilliant. Lots of carbon fiber, lots of aero, and a big wing! With so many other brands jumping back into the realm of sportscar racing, it would be easy to conceive that BMW might actually be cooking up something like this concept.
Let’s just consider LeMans for a moment. Right now the top-tier class, the Prototype class, runs hybrid drivetrains. The new i8 runs a hybrid drivetrain. I’m not saying that BMW should hop straight into the Prototype class with a modified version of the i8’s system, but it could be the bridge between the Prototype class and the regular GT class of cars. We need automakers in racing to help bring new technologies to market, and with one hybrid in the GT class, we may start to see more and more sports cars with electrically augmented drivetrains like the LaFerrari, P1, and 918, and that would be great.
Being a concept, we have to wait to see if BMW gets the hint and takes its new supercar to the track. I say we start a petition. They really need to do this.
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image [jonsibal.com]