The BMW teams have got their weight set to the lowest possible ahead of the penultimate race of the season, 1140 kilos. A weight the BMW teams say is impossible to reach.
“We had problems reaching the minimum weight when we were allowed to reduce under our base weight. We were approximately 20 kilos heavier at Sonoma than the allowed weight and 10 kilos in Suzuka. It means that it is possible to run the BMW on factory minimum weight 1.160 kg but not under it. This is a problem for all BMW teams not just for Zengő Motorsport,” said Gergő Bari, engineer of BMW team Zengő Motorsport, to Túraautó Hírblog.
In order for the BMW teams to reach the weight, the WTCC organisation has allowed the teams to use plastic side and rear windows.
“Changing the side windows to plexi means approximately 3-4 kilos less and the rear window would be the same. I say ‘would’ because the permission was granted but nobody managed to find a solution for that until now, so all BMW teams are running with the original rear window at the moment. I hope someone will find a suitable solution for this problem soon that we can all apply to our cars. However it would be even more important that BMW do some factory weight reduction during the winter to enable us taking the benefit of the compensation system,” said Bari.
While the teams are able to reduce some of the weight with changes like the plastic windows, Zengő Motorsport calls for BMW Motorsport to change the car during the winter.
“This weight reduction is not a difficult engineering project. The difficult part is the paperwork. BMW does not plan serious development or factory involvement in the near future, but we really hope that they will work at least on the weight of the car. It could make the 320 TC a bit more competitive next year,” said Bari.
