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      12-06-2019, 01:29 PM   #15
Law
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Drives: E90 M3 6MT
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2011.5 BMW M3  [10.00]
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This is big news philosophically because BMW has not entered with a 6-cylinder in this category of Motorsport in a very long time; I'm talking E36 & early E46 days. (Team PTG anyone?)





In fact, it was the limitations of the S54/P54 Inline-6 configuration that ultimately led it to be outclassed by others (i.e., Porsche) that prompted BMW to make the bold move to stick a V8 (P60) into the M3 with the E46 M3 GTR (which was technically "cheating" because the production M3 E46 had a 6 cyl, and BMW then found a loophole to homologate the GTR but in the end it was still hardly production and hence the ban).



Of course, the ban didn't sit well with BMW and they still wanted to race the M3.
This, combined with the fact that BMW M engineers also figured out they could saw off 2 cylinders from the S85 V10, may have indirectly & spiritually contributed to the birth of the actual "production" V8 M3 with the E9x generation and now the headache of homologating a production V8 M3 was in the past.



BMW continued to race with some variant of the S65/P65 all the way through with the Z4 GT3/GTLM/GTE/GTD until it bowed out to the M6 GT3, which was also a V8 but S63 based.




And now, almost two decades later...should be very interesting.
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