BMW pulls out of ALMS, and Grand-Am

BMW North America announced it will end its 12-year relationship with Tom Milner’s Prototype Technology Group team at the close of the American Le Mans Series season. It is the end of a successful partnership that has yielded 54 wins from 114 race starts from 1995 to 2001 and from 2003 to 2006 in almost every U.S. sports car series.

A BMW North America spokesman says the company canned PTG’s long-running program because it no longer has any relevance to BMW’s product range. PTG races an E46-shape BMW M3, a car that is disappearing from dealerships. A new M3 likely won’t appear in the United States until 2008, and BMW does not want to race a car it does not sell.

BMW has not ruled out returning to sports cars in 2008, and Milner says PTG will continue next season, perhaps running its GT-2 class M3s in the ALMS on a privateer basis. AutoWeek