BMW South Africa has unveiled a brand-new BMW 335i racing car, which will compete in the SA Production Car championship in 2012. According to BMW it's the first sixth-generation BMW 3 Series racing car in the world, and it'll compete for the first time at the Wesbank Super Series race meeting at Killarney in Cape Town on 31 March.
The race car was built in South Africa by ADF Motorsport, which manages Team Afrox, and will be driven by 2010 Production Car champion Anthony Taylor and Etienne van der Lindec - who also plan to enter one of the SA-built cars for the Nurburgring 24-hour race later this year.
Team principal Donovan van Heerden said it took the team less than two months to build the first race car, at a cost of R2 million (including labour). It weighs just over 1360 kg and has the latest version of BMW's proven three-litre straight six with TwinPower turbo set-up.
UP AND RUNNING IN A HURRY
Ironically, while the engine internals remain stock standard, it has actually been restricted to comply with SA Production Car regulations, which stipulate a 40mm restrictor plate on the turbo inlet and no more than 0.7 bar of boost. However, thanks to a modified engine management system, exhaust and turbocharger have been, it still delivers more than 300kW and 600Nm of torque.
One of the ways to get the race car up and running so quickly was to use a significant number of off-the-shelf parts from BMW's new M Performance aftermarket catalogue, including 370mm M Performance front disk brakes, 18” BBS rims and a very authoritative Akrapovic exhaust system.
BMW SA after-sales manager Rod Baxter said: “This partnership with ADF Motorsport showcases various BMW M Performance parts available that customers can fit in their cars without compromising their warranty.
Van Heerden added: “We've also installed a MoTeC engine control unit featuring the new M1 system, which makes this car the first in the world to run direct injection on a production based race car, and a GPS data-logging system that draws data from the engine management system to warn the driver of any electronic faults during the race.”