BMW Adds Its Huge New Grille to Its M4 Race Car
Love it or hate it, at least it looks functional for racing.
BMW is speeding right ahead with its huge kidney grille—right onto the race track. Bimmer unveiled their new 2022 M4 GT3 race car today, complete with a giant grille to match the new M4 coupe.
Camouflaged prototypes of the new 2021 BMW M4 Coupe and 2022 M4 GT3 debuted at the Red Bull Ring ahead of the MotoGP BMW M Grand Prix of Styria. They've teased this new GT3 race car before, but this is our best look yet at what the final car should look like. The final race car design will be unveiled at a later date, as BMW says they're still testing a few things out.
Whether you're fine with this radical change to BMW's iconic grille or you're now wondering if you were a bit too hard on Chris Bangle, you have to admit that the M4's new buckteeth look pretty functional on the GT3 racer.
The fact that BMW highlighted the GT3 racer's grille in red next to the roadgoing M4's black grilled for these demo runs really emphasizes their differences. It's clear that the M4 GT3's extra grille real estate is being used to direct air to exactly where it needs to go on the race car.
The top of the M4 GT3's kidneys features a couple of separate air intakes, whereas the bottom appears to have just one large crossmember compared to the multiple horizontal grille lines across the road car's grille. GT3 cars race in several high-level endurance series, so keeping everything cool for multiple hours at a time is extremely important.
The M4 GT3 is set to replace the M6 GT3 as the car it sells to high-level customer racing teams in (what else?) sprint and endurance series worldwide that use the GT3 spec. It will participate in select races in 2021 before going into customer teams' hands in 2022.
The exact specifications haven't been released yet, but BMW confirmed today that it will share the high-revving twin-turbo S58 straight-six with the road car.
It's safe to say that this will be paired to a sequential racing transmission powering the rear wheels given the specifications of the GT3 racing class. We can already see that it has more aerodynamic elements such as a larger splitter, huge wing and meatier fender flares.
While the Big M8 GTE Le Mans car will always have a special place in our hearts, this new GT3 race car should be fun to watch, too.
[H/T Road & Track!]
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