BMW has revealed that Team WRT’s #20 M V8 Hybrid will become their celebrated 20th ‘Art Car’, and will be revealed on 21 May prior to the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The Bavarian manufacturer has confirmed their 20th Art Car will compete in this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, on 15-16 June.
For the 2024 FIA WEC season, the #20 Hypercar entrant will be driven by Robin Frijns, Sheldon van der Linde, and Rene Rast.
Speaking about artist Julie Mehretu and her style, BMW said: “For the design of the 20th BMW Art Car, Julie Mehretu uses the colour and form vocabulary of an existing large-format painting from a more recent series of works: obscured photographs, dotted grids, neon-coloured spray paint and Mehretu’s iconic gestural markings give her design an abstract visual form.
“She transfers the resulting image motif as a high-resolution photograph onto the vehicle’s contours using a 3D mapping technique.
“This creates the unique artistic foiling with which the BMW M Hybrid V8 will compete in the Le Mans race.”
She was chosen to design the 20th BMW Art Car in 2018 by a jury of representatives from the international art world, as she will also design the drivers’ racing suits for Le Mans.
“It wasn’t until after going to the 24 Hours race in Daytona last year that the idea of how to approach the BMW Art Car really crystallised,” Mehretu explained.
“I was thinking about Frank Stella’s grid and how this could also be a shout-out to former BMW Art Car artists.
“And I kept thinking of this painting in my studio that I had just finished and the model of the Art Car was in my studio and I thought maybe we can try to have the car move through this painting.”
The first ever ‘Art Car’ in 1975, designed by Alexander Calder, also drove at the Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans.
BMW’s previous Art Car was in 2017 with the BMW M6 GTLM, designed by John Baldessari, and ran at the IMSA 24 Hours of Daytona.
The BMW M Hybrid V8 debuted last year at the IMSA 24 Hours of Daytona, and after running its first IMSA season, BMW has returned to the WEC since their former GTE works programme.
They have partnered with Team WRT, who competed in the WEC’s LMP2 class for the past three years and won two Teams’ titles in the process.
It will be BMW’s return to the top class of sportscar racing since fielding the BMW V12 LMR (LMP900) in 1999, which secured their only Le Mans victory.
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