BMW Motorsport is winning a lot in esports, and here’s why
BMW started IMSA's 2020 season with a win at Daytona, and it has kept winning as racing has moved online. [credit: BMW Motorsport ]
The year got off to a pretty good start for BMW Motorsport. It scored a win at Daytona in January, the second year in a row its big M8 GTE came home best-in-class at the high-profile 24-hour race that really starts off the international racing season. Next up was supposed to be the 12 Hours of Sebring in March. But that visit to the bumpy concrete track that used to be a WWII bomber base in Florida bumped into the hard reality of SARS-CoV-2. The (hopefully temporary) end of public gatherings has driven real-world racers to compete on virtual race tracks for our entertainment as each professional racing series in turn spins up its own take on esports. And despite the shift, BMW Motorsport keeps racking up the wins.
IMSA has unlocked car setupMost of the esports racing events, whether in iRacing, rFactor 2, or something else, have used standardized cars and locked-down setups as a way to level playing fields. But IMSA's sports car series has taken a different tack, allowing competitors to set their cars up to their liking. And right from the start, BMW Motorsport took full advantage, locking out the podium at a virtual Sebring with a 1-2-3 finish for the iRacing version of its M8 GTE race car. That's because it has been treating sim racing like any other discipline in motorsport for a while now, says Rudolf Dittrich, general manager for BMW Motorsport's vehicle development.
"Obviously the situation right now is a bit special with coronavirus, but even before that you could see that the interest in participants and but also in viewers and spectators has been growing a lot, so therefore it was obvious for us to investigate a bit more," Dittrich told Ars. "And we thought it's worthwhile to expand our activities and also try to really have a very structured backbone, like we would have in any other motor racing discipline; to really be able to work on this stuff the way we're used to do in other programs."
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