We are only days away from the official unveiling of the 2012 BMW DTM entry. This weekend in Munich at the DTM ‘Fest BMW will take the wraps off its latest race project. Until then we will just drool over the car as it was caught doing some testing.

After BMW ‘s exit from F1, the brand ‘s focus has been on production racing, ALMS and the GT series in particular. DTM had been BMW ‘s forte for many years but they exited almost two decades ago during a period of rule changes and controversy. New rules (heavily lobbied by BMW and the former Motorsports head Dr. Theissen) will allow BMW to join the DTM in a manner in BMW will be competitive from the start and financially is not going to break the Bavarian piggy bank.

BMW ‘s entry into DTM coincidentally or not, went hand in hand with DTM being announced formally for the US market in 2013. The typical German teams (Mercedes and Audi now with BMW) will run satellite operations in the United States for 12 races to coincide with with Grand-AM events.

It is an exciting time and hopefully this will decrease NASCAR fandom a bit as those M&M jackets are painful to look at!

Photo: F1Technical