| BMW's championship-winning M3 GTs are now museum pieces after the Bavarian automaker replaced them with the Z4 GTE for the 2013 American Le Mans Series season. The Rahal Letterman Lanigan team—who's run M3 GTs under the BMW umbrella since the 2009 season—has been involved with the development of the Z4 GTE, which is based on the successful Z4 GT3 race car, from the beginning and first tested the new racer in mid-January. The result is a 2745-pound (rules-mandated) car powered by a 32-valve, 4.4-liter V-8 restricted via intake to 480 horsepower, down from the GT3′s 508, with maximum torque of 354 lb-ft and mated to a paddle-shifted six-speed automated manual. While the GT3 race cars are allowed to use such electronic aids as ABS and stability controll, they are banned on the GTE machines. The Z4 GTE will give BMW a race car to bridge the transition from ALMS in 2013 to the ALMS/Grand Am combined series in 2014. Given the M3's cult status, you might be asking yourself, "Why the Z4?" For one thing, with last year's launch of the new F30-generation 3-series, the current M3′s days were numbered. However, the next M3 isn't scheduled to be revealed until late 2013 or early 2014, and if BMW wants to continue using a coupe, as it has, the wait will be even longer with the new M4 expected to follow six months or a year later. Given this confluence of bad timing, it made sense to convert the established Z4 GT3 to GTE specification. Not only does the logic check out, but it also provides BMW with a platform to further market the Z4, of which 2751 were sold in 2012—nearly two-thirds being coupes—and making it the basis for a race car can only help sales. BMW's efforts will be in the hands of venerable U.S. driver Bill Auberlen, teamed with an ALMS rookie, Belgium's Maxime Martin. German Dirk Müller will be in the second car, his co-driver being one of two American drivers, Joey Hand when his BMW DTM commitments allow, or John Edwards. That lineup applies to eight of the ALMS races for 2013, while at the Sebring and Road Atlanta enduros, German drivers Jörg Müller and Uwe Alzen will join the team.
Those M3 GTs will prove to be a tough act to follow. They took the ALMS team and manufacturer GT crowns in 2010 and did the same in 2011, adding driver titles with Hand and Müller. Chevrolet won the title in 2012 with its Corvette thanks to Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner, and BMW is hedging its bets for 2013 by calling it a "development year." The Z4 GTE will get its first race action in March at the 12 Hours of Sebring.  from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com | |||
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