UPDATE #3 BMW will also maintain their involvement in the Grand-AM series, but with private teams whereas the factory effort is moving to the ALMS (i.e. the big money is moving to the ALMS).
11/29/05 With an official announcement expected momentarily AutoRacing1.com can exclusively reveal that BMW will join the ALMS GT2 class starting in 2006. We await the official BMW press release. We can also exclusively reveal that there will be more manufacturer announcements by ALMS in the near future. Why is ALMS able to land so many new manufacturers? Because their rules are now an FIA standard, not just an ACO standard, so their cars can be raced not only in ALMS, but in LMES and FIA-GT, whereas the Grand-Am has cars that can only be raced in the Grand-Am, hence they will never land the large number of manufacturers who actually activate their involvement in a big way.
Is this a major coup for ALMS? Absolutely, and hats off to Scott Atherton and his team Porsche, now BMW and more on the way. Mark C. 11/29/05 Just to clarify, this will not be the Honda announcement, but it will be a major manufacturer nonetheless and it will come from Grand-Am. Look for it early Tuesday morning. We know who it is but the info is embargoed. And we can tell you that more manufacturers are close to coming on board as well. Mark C. 11/28/05 AutoRacing1.com has it on good word that a major manufacturer is about to announce that they are moving their Grand-Am program to the ALMS. If true it just underscores how successful ALMS management has been in landing so many additional manufacturers, both car and tire manufacturers. Mark C.
