Theissen: “A BMW will always be available in WTCC”

BMW’s discontent with the current state of the World Touring Car Championships rules have been going on for a good while. Still the German manufacturer has not confirmed if they are going to continue next year.
“Actually, the first question is whether we are going to provide support to our customers or not: There will always be a BMW available for our wide basis of customers to buy and compete in,” said BMW Motorsport boss Mario Theissen to TouringCarTimes.com.

“As for us being there with a works project, we haven’t decided yet. But I would like to clarify once again that our customers will always receive our support and a BMW racing car will always be available to race in the WTCC.”

For 2011 the will switch engine rules, introducing turbo charged 1.6 liter engines, a decision that Theissen supports.

“This goes beyond WTCC. It’s a kind of global engine, suitable for many different motorsport categories. It makes absolute sense to try and use an engine that can be easily adapted to different forms of competition.

It is much cheaper to enter a new championship having already developed a good engine that can be used in the series, but building a completely new engine requires a lot of resources and is a huge obstacle in entering new categories, even if they are very interesting,” said Theissen.

While BMW traditionally has produced mainly naturally aspirated engines, they have followed the current trend of smaller turbo charged engines in their production models.

“Nowadays the cars we see everyday are using smaller but more efficient engines, equipped with a turbocharger and with less cilynders. This makes racing cars much nearer to the production cars, which can only please our customers,” said Theissen.

The WTCC 2009 season is nearing its end and it is really close between BMW and SEAT in the championship. Theissen has got high hopes.

“I believe we are in with a good chance to take both crowns. Imola will be difficult for us, but Okayama and Macau are kind of ‘neutral’ venues, in which we can play our cards on a pretty much even basis with SEAT Sport,” said Theissen.

When SEAT took the crown last year, they said that the key was their team effort. The different factory BMW teams on the contrary often compete hard against each other.

This, however, is not a problem any more according to Theissen.

“Well, they [SEAT] forgot the [diesel] engine [as a reason why they took both crowns]! Of course last year we made some mistakes, but in 2009 we got our act together and decided to adopt a different strategy, so that is not a disadvantage anymore,” said Theissen.

The interview was done in collaboration with stopandgo.tv.