BMW Motorsport confirmed its 2014 plans at the annual motorsports party in Munich.
BMW Team RLL will contest the 2014 Tudor United SportsCar Championship with the two Z4s that it ran in ALMS in 2013. Andy Priaulx, who is moving to TUSC from DTM, will join Bill Auberlen, Dirk Müller, John Edwards, and Joey Hand at Daytona. Edwards moves up to full-time with the team, while Hand will run in the longer endurance races when he does not have conflicts with his DTM commitments.
As announced on the day before the party, Maxime Martin moves to DTM from ALMS, trading places with Priaulx. He will be joined by new driver António Félix da Costa and six drivers returning from last season, including Augusto Farfus, Timo Glock, Joey Hand, Bruno Spengler, Martin Tomczyk, and Marco Wittman. The same four teams, BMW teams RBM, Schnitzer, MTEK and RMG, will be back. Driver assignments to the teams have not yet been announced.
Dirk Werner leaves DTM to focus on endurance racing in the Z4 GT3. BMW will support two endurance racing teams, including both Marc VDS and Team Schubert. The rest of the driver lineup will be announced later.
BMW also reconfirmed the launch of a new customer racing car, the M235i, indicating that 30 orders had already been placed for the 59,500 Euro racer.—Brian S. Morgan
