In fact BMWs have been competing successfully in World Championships ever since 1924, when the original R32 boxer won its first ever hill-climb, then followed that by taking nine consecutive German Championships. Since then BMWs have won everything from the Senior TT to the US Superbike Championship, via Grands Prix and the Dakar Rally.
So while it’s fair to say that the Munich lads haven’t scored a top-level title for a long time, their record shows they know how to win (and not only on penalties). Here’s a look at BMW’s racing hits, plus what’s to come in the next couple of years...
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World’s Fastest Motorcyclist
World’s Fastest Motorcyclist
BMW’s first superstar was Ernst Henne, who won the prestigious Targa Florio road-race over the mountain hairpins of Sicily but was best known for a string of record-breaking runs that earned him the unofficial title of ‘World’s Fastest Motorcyclist’. Henne set 76 world records, starting in 1929 when he recorded a two-way average of 134.6mph over the flying mile on an autobahn near Munich.
Henne’s first record-breaking bike was a 750cc Boxer whose speed was boosted not only by a supercharger and half-fairing, but by its rider’s gear. As well as a streamlined helmet like an exaggerated version of those used by track-racing cyclists, he wore a metre-long cone that was strapped to his arse and stuck out behind to smooth the air-flow.
Record-breaking was a big deal in the Thirties, when Henne’s rivalry with Brits Joe Wright and Eric Fernihough saw figures repeatedly raised. Wright was first to crack the 150mph mark, riding a 1,000cc Zenith-Jap V-twin. In 1936 Henne ditched his tail-cone for a fully enclosed boxer on which he upped the flying kilometre record to 169.14mph.
Fernihough claimed the record on his Brough Superior in 1937 before Henne blasted down the closed autobahn at 173.67mph. Fernihough then rode his Brough to a one-way figure of over 180mph, but was killed on his return run. Henne’s record stood until 1951.
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Senior, then Service
Senior, then Service
George Meier’s victory in the 1939 Senior TT was great for BMW but wasn’t the most popular ever win for the Island spectators. World War II was only months away, and the German government encouraged a show of strength, with works entries from NSU and DKW, as well as BMW. By contrast Norton was busy building bikes to fulfil its military contract, so works riders Freddie Frith and Harold Daniell had to ride the previous year’s racers.
Even brand new Norton singles would have struggled to match BMW’s mighty 500 Kompressor, one of the outstanding machines of the company’s history. Boosted by the supercharger running off the front end of its 493cc boxer engine’s crank, the Kompressor produced 55bhp and was timed at 135mph at the TT. Its chassis was also very innovative, featuring hydraulic forks and adjustable plunger rear suspension.
The ’39 TT started disastrously for BMW when one of their stars, Karl Gall, was killed in a practice crash. But Meier led from the start and won easily ahead of his British team-mate Jock West. During the War, which began three months later, Meier hid his TT-winning bike in a haystack. He recovered it and returned to the Island in 1989, half a century after his win, to ride it in a parade lap.
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Pull up a Chair
Pull up a Chair
Supercharging was banned when bike racing restarted after World War II, which put the kybosh on the Kompressor. Even without its supercharger, the Rennsport, as BMW’s 500cc Boxer was called, was still fast enough for plenty of wins although the most notable, Walter Zeller’s victory in the German Grand Prix in 1953, was not a full World Championship round. At the very highest level the twin could not live with Norton’s works singles, let alone MV Agusta’s stunning fours.
By contrast the Boxer was so competitive in the sidecar class that BMW dominated to a monotonous degree. The firm’s success was easy to understand, and not just because of rival factories’ lack of involvement. The Boxer motor’s excellent cylinder cooling and low centre of gravity made it ideal when it didn’t need to lean.
BMW’s grip on the sidecar world championship was even stronger than MV’s hold on the 500s. The marque won all but two titles in the 20 years between 1955 and ’74, and usually took second and third places too. Most successful was Klaus Enders, who won six Championships, five with Ralf Engelhardt, between 1967 and ’74. That beat Max Deubel and Emil Horner’s four straight wins in the early Sixties.
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Island Games
Island Games
BMW’s Helmut Dahne was the ultimate sports-touring rider of the mid-Seventies. Taking the production racing concept with typically Germanic seriousness, the lanky Dahne tuned his R90S himself (in those days titanium internals and a race pipe were allowed), rode it all the way from Munich to the Island, and finished third in the Production TT behind winner Mick Grant and the ‘Slippery Sam’ Triumph Trident. Then he rode it back home.
Dahne was out of luck at the following year’s TT, when he led the Proddy race before a stone punctured a rocker-box cover, which had been worn almost completely through by being scraped in the bends. The engine lost so much oil that it seized. (For future races the resourceful Helmut carried a spare rocker-box cover along with his sarnies under the seat.)
Dahne was back for the Production TT in 1976, this time teaming up with compatriot Hans-Otto Butenuth. In the final practice session Dahne’s Boxer hit engine trouble, which looked like putting the duo out as they had few spares. But Dahne persuaded a BMW-riding spectator to lend a cylinder head. Dahne and Butenuth won the ten-lap 1,000cc Production TT, though the race’s handicap system placed them fifth overall, behind 250cc bikes that had completed a lap fewer.
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Dirt and Dakar
Dirt and Dakar
BMWs have been improbably successful off-road ever since BMW’s designer/racer Rudolph Schleicher rode his new R37 boxer to a Gold Medal at the ISDT (International Six Days Trial) in 1926. Many more mud-plugging wins followed, but the results that did most for BMW’s reputation were the firm’s four Paris-Dakar victories in the Eighties.
These were spectacular wins, due to the sheer size of the bikes as well as to the relatively new Dakar event’s high publicity value. BMW’s first winner, in 1981, was Frenchman Hubert Auriol, whose giant 798cc boxer, based on the recently launched R80 G/S, produced 55bhp and had a 42-litre steel petrol tank. Auriol won again two years later, this time with a 980cc, 72bhp twin carrying 48 litres of gas.
In one respect the 1985 and ’86 wins by triple motocross world champion Gaston Rahier were even more impressive. At just 5ft 4in the Belgian was barely as tall as his 1,015cc GS, which he had to start by jumping onto the seat with the bike in motion. BMW quit the Dakar following a disastrous 1986 race (during which creator Thierry Sabine was killed in a helicopter crash) but returned a few years later with trick RR versions of the F650 single. Frenchman Richard Sainct won in 1999 and again in 2000, when he led a BMW sweep of the top four places.
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Superbike Stars
Superbike Stars
The first ever winner of a national-level Superbike race was not a Ducati or even a Honda but a BMW. American racer Steve McLaughlin not only organised the inaugural US Superbike series in 1976, he also rode an R90S for the importer, Butler & Smith, alongside team-mates Gary Fisher and ex-pat Brit Reg Pridmore.
The bikini-faired R90S was BMW’s fastest roadster yet and was considerably tweaked, as allowed by the new Superbike regs. Ace tuner Udo Gietl shortened the Boxer’s cylinders to allow greater lean angles, fitted titanium conrods and pushrods that allowed a rev limit of over 9,000rpm, and replaced the twin shocks with a custom-built Koni monoshock sourced from a Formula One racecar. Those were the days.
At the opening round at Daytona the three R90S riders diced for the lead before Fisher’s bike broke down, leaving McLaughlin to draft past Pridmore on the line to win by inches. “What the BMW lacked in horsepower to Japanese multi-cylinder machines it more than made up in handling,” he said afterwards. Pridmore got revenge by becoming the first US Superbike champion, ahead of McLaughlin, before leaving BMW to win two more titles for Kawasaki.
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Boxer Tricks
Boxer Tricks
In the last few years BMW’s international road-racing activity has arguably been more newsworthy for the bike that didn’t compete than for any that did. The firm even went as far as releasing an action photo of its MotoGP prototype, believed to be a 990cc triple whose engine design owed much to BMW racecar technology. But the project foundered amid rumours that the engine did not make competitive power, and it was abandoned when MotoGP’s capacity limit was reduced to 800cc. The work and money spent was not all wasted, though. BMW bike boss Hendrik von Kuenheim recently said: “We learned a great deal from the MotoGP project, one of the most important being what not to do.”
Meanwhile BMW was having more success developing a boxer, the HP2 1200S, for endurance racing. At last year’s Le Mans 24 Hours, the factory-backed team of Thomas Hinterreiter, Rico Penzkofer and Markus Barth won their class and finished 16th overall aboard the prototype of the HP2 Sport. Several more good results followed but their luck ran out at this year’s Le Mans. One HP2 broke and the other missed a top-15 finish when it conked out in the last few minutes of the 24 hours. Brit rider Richard Cooper pushed it back but reached the pits too late, so was excluded from the results because bikes have to be running at the end.
BMW’s other highest profile races in recent years have been one-make series, notably the BoxerCup series that ran at European MotoGP rounds for four years from 2001. As well as delivering some improbably entertaining action, the BoxerCup led to replica versions of the R1100S. For 2005 the series was replaced by the PowerCup for hotted-up K1200R fours, which produced 170bhp but weighed 230kg despite various carbon-fibre bits.
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Superbikes are Go!
Superbikes are Go!
BMW’s decision to attack Japan head-on with a 1,000cc transverse four super-sports bike to enter World Superbikes is arguably the most ambitious of the firm’s history. The S1000RR will be produced in numbers of at least 1,000 in 2009 to homologate it for WSB, and went on sale early the following year. It is being created to be the most powerful and lightest bike in the class, with a target of 190bhp and wet weight of 190kg for the production model.
BMW Motorrad General Director Von Kuenheim’s comment that the S1000RR’s design “will be absolutely unique and very different” sounds a bit dubious given that the bike could easily have been built by any one of the Japanese firms.
But BMW’s UK bike boss Adrian Roderick expects the final bike to incorporate some significant changes. “I don’t think there’s a danger that this bike will be too similar to the Japanese bikes. The brief that chief designer David Robb was given was that standing still it has got to frighten people. When I asked him about the design, he just smiled. Until the latters stages they were developing the bike using bodywork from an R6, which gave an indication of how small it is.”
Von Kuenheim has confirmed that the RR will incorporate some advanced engine technology, including traction control and “especially on the cylinder head”. This could be a reference to pneumatic valvegear or one of several forms of variable valve technology, derived from BMW’s car division.
Von Kuenheim has high expectations of the RR. “In year two we plan to catch up with the top teams and win our first places on the podium,” he says. “Our medium-term objective, obviously, is to win the World Championship!” Which won’t be easy, given that it took Yamaha 20 years of trying.
Meanwhile the production S1000RR was released early this year, priced around £11,000. Unlike Ducati, BMW does not plan to reserve the highest specification parts for an expensive limited-edition. “There will be one S1000RR, with no derivatives,” says Roderick. “The idea is to produce it as close as possible to the racebike. So it will include traction control, though maybe with different components.”
