BMW presents art car design for Le Mans

BMW is traveling to the 24 Hours of Le Mans (June 15-16, 2024) with a visual declaration of war. On Tuesday evening in Paris, the Munich-based car manufacturer presented the special paintwork of its #20 LMDh racing car for the upcoming season highlight in the WEC racing calendar. This is a special art car paintwork that BMW has been sending to racetracks around the world for many years and now for the 20th time.

The #20 crew, consisting of former DTM champions Sheldon van der Linde and Rene Rast as well as Robin Frijns, will start in an art car designed by New York artist Julie Mehretu. “I see the vehicle as a performative painting – it was created for the racetrack and not for the museum,” she explained in the presence of BMW CEO Oliver Zipse. The foiling results from digitally altered photographs, which are superimposed in several layers of dot grids, neon-colored veils and the black markings characteristic of Mehretu’s works.

BMW in the WEC is only in fifth place in the World Championship table

When it comes to paintwork, BMW doesn’t have to hide from the hypercar competition, but there is still a lot of room for improvement in terms of sport. There wasn’t much to gain for BMW in the first three WEC races of the season in Qatar, Imola and most recently in Spa-Francorchamps. In the World Cup table, the Munich team is in fifth place overall behind leaders Porsche, Toyota, Ferrari and WEC newcomer Alpine. The two BMW M Hybrid V8s have so far collected 21 points, while Porsche already has 83 points.

The #20 crew around Sheldon van der Linde, Rene Rast and Robin Frijns has scored a meager ten points so far and is in twelfth place in the drivers’ standings. Things were much more unsatisfactory for the sister car with starting number #15, which BMW newcomer Raffaele Marciello, Marco Wittmann and Dries Vanthoor share: The trio has not yet been able to score a single point.

From BMW’s perspective, things are going much better in the LMGT3 category. In the new class of GT3 cars, the WRT team took second place with 37 points. However, the gap to leaders Manthey-Porsche (72 points) has increased significantly after Meuspather’s recent double victory in Spa. WRT-BMW has already won the ‘race’ for the fans’ favor with superstar Valentino Rossi, as you can also find out in this article:

BMW M boss van Meel: “We want to be on the podium this year”

A good performance at Le Mans with its global appeal could quickly make the rather mediocre results forgotten. “25 years after our last victory, we don’t just want to compete, we want to be at the front,” said BMW M managing director Franziskus van Meel in Spa Motorsport-Magazin.com. “We want to be on the podium. WRT is a great team, we have good drivers and the car is sophisticated. If we drive through stable, we should have a chance of being able to fight at Le Mans.”

BMW is contesting its first season in the WEC, but looks back on a year of experience with the LMDh car in the US IMSA series. The cars for both racing series are identical. Van Meel: “It would be wrong if I said that we’ll just see how the first season goes. Especially because we already have a year of experience in IMSA. WRT had a different start than RLL (BMW -Operations team in the IMSA; editor), and the car is much further along in its development and level of maturity. That’s why the expectations in the WEC are different.”

At the same time, van Meel made it clear that the competition in the WEC with its nine hypercar brands is tougher than in the IMSA, where BMW ‘only’ takes on Porsche, Cadillac and Acura: “The field is significantly larger than in the IMSA. And the professionalism and strictness of the rules is also a level higher. This makes the challenge even greater. But the expectations remain the same. We want to be on the podium, and not just next year.”

At the last WEC race in Spa, Motorsport-Magazin.com was able to take a lap around the famous Ardennes circuit with BMW works driver Robin Frijns. You can now read what we experienced in this article: