TAZIO ISSUE 5

Special: 50 Years of BMW Motorsport

Welcome to our first special, where we dedicate pretty much all our pages to the 50 Years of BMW Motorsport. Promised: even if you’re not a BMW fan, you will like this.

Inside:

• Where it all began: we go on track in a Group 2 BMW 3.0 CSL and talk to Toine Hezemans.
• Jochen Neerpasch sits down and talks us through his days at Motorsport: “One evening, I got a phone call from Bob Lutz who said: ‘I don’t like how your Fords are beating our BMWs. Do you want to come over to us?’.”
• Hans-Joachim Stuck tells all about his wonder years with BMW.
• BMW was the first constructor to take the Formula 1 world title with a turbo engine. Gordon Murray guides us through the 1983 F1 season and one of his most remarkable creations: the Brabham BT53.
• In the 1992, the Spa 24 Hours should have been a BMW parade. Instead, the race turned into a last lap sprint between two BMW drivers. Thirty years later, we go back to Spa with the main characters: Steve Soper, Eric van de Poele and the #5 BMW E30 M3.
• BMW Motorsport has only one Le Mans 24-victory to its name. For newly-appointed BMW Motorsport co-director Mario Theissen, this was the first big race he was to oversee.
• Pierluigi Martini drove the 1999 Le Mans-winning BMW V12 LMR across the line. He guides us through his remarkable career and looks back on that day at La Sarthe.
• We have a BMW M3, a BMW M4 and a Class 1 BMW M4 at the Red Bull Ring in Austria to report on Motorsport’s final big chapter (for now): the DTM.
• Columns from Hurley Haywood, Steve Soper and Christian Geistdörfer on BMW
• And so much more.