Over five decades after brothers Josef and Herbert Schnitzer Sr. began racing BMW sedans in Europe, their team, known as Schnitzer Motorsport, looks unable to continue as a privateer according to sources in Germany. The unexpected fall of one of Germany's oldest racing teams comes as the direct result of a decision by BMW Motorsport to cut all ties with Schnitzer and thus no longer back the same outfit that had masterminded BMW's sole 24 Hours of Le Mans win to date.

Tradition doesn't weigh much in the eyes of BMW

BMW, the manufacturer behind the 'Sheer Driving Pleasure' catchphrase, one that has long since differentiated itself from its German peers, be it Audi or Mercedes-Benz, through its motorsport exploits that almost always feature production-based models, has officially cut ties with two of its oldest partners. One of them is Team Schnitzer Motorsport, unarguably one of Germany's most famous teams, and the other is Bart Mampaey's Team RBM whose entire existence is also indelibly linked to the Bavarian brand.

A press statement dropped on December 4 saying that "Changes at BMW Motorsport" are going to happen. This statement came not long after BMW announced it would pull the plug (pun intended!) on its factory-backed Formula E program at the end of the 2020-2021 season. The Andretti Autosport squad would, just like the Abt team following Audi's recently-announced departure, be forced to soldier on without a major automaker bankrolling its involvement in the world's leading racing series centered around EVs.

The changes detailed by this most recent statement are seminal if you are a fan of BMW Motorsport as, in one quick move, BMW has basically curtailed all of the factory support it was previously giving to two of the teams that have been essential in building the impressive resume that BMW Motorsport boasts with today. In the absence of these two teams, BMW's racing record would've looked extremely different and, now, we're set for a strange future without these two operations as part of BMW's roster.

Future is now "bleak" for Schnitzer

"It is a great shame ," said Team RBM Boss Bart Mampaey, quoted in the BMW press statement (we'll talk more about Team RBM below). He went on to add that "I would like to thank BMW for the fantastic partnership, which we have enjoyed for 25 long years." If that seems like a lot of time (and he didn't add to the count all of the years that Juma spent at BMW's side), spare a thought for Team Schnitzer that's been racing BMWs basically ever since it was established all the way back in 1963.

In spite of all that Schnitzer has achieved together with BMW (including wins at the Nurburgring, Le Mans, and a plethora of international and national titles which we'll discuss in greater detail below), the team now joins RBM as a fully private outfit with zero backing coming from a manufacturer. This, Team Principal Herbert Schnitzer Jr. said, is a decision that the team deeply regrets although he did add that "we obviously understand and respect the decision. We are proud that we Schnitzers have, together with BMW, shaped international motorsport for so many decades."

His regret also stems from the fact that actually, the team will not be able to go on without the financial support that BMW was bringing to the table. By contrast, RBM said that "we will initially reduce our racing activities. However, that does not mean this is the end of our motorsport chapter."

"We have had a lot of discussions to find an alternative partner in the form of a sponsor or investor. However, the market does not offer much in these Covid times," said Schnitzer Jr., talking to German outlet LSR-Freun.de. He underlined the fact that a team such as Schnitzer cannot run in what he calls a "cost-effective" way due to "our professional team structure" and the cost involved in keeping the team's high-tech shop running.

It also didn't help that the team had to pay off the shares that the late, great Charly Lamm had in the team. Lamm acted as Team Principal for decades, finally retiring at the end of 2018 when Augusto Farfus claimed a very emotional victory in the GT World Cup at Macau. Sadly, he would pass on in January of 2019 at the age of 63 after what was described as a "short illness".

Schnitzer Jr. argued that, in this context, and with an insufficiently substantial income flow projected for 2021, the team "is not economically justifiable," meaning that "a company closure is inevitable. After more than 50 years of motorsport with BMW vehicles, this situation is very difficult for all of us to deal with."

This year, Schnitzer has been busy developing the new-for-2021 BMW M4 GT3 and it was expected that Schnitzer would also carry out the development program next year, one that was bound to feature a few racing outings for the M4 GT3 before it would finally be shipped to expecting customers ahead of the 2022 season. While that's still the plan, the duty of completing the on-track development phase of the M4 GT3 now falls on the shoulders of Team RMG, the last team that BMW still has on its payroll and thus the team that will also give the M4 GT3 its competitive racing debut.

Before taking over the reins of the M4 GT3's development program, Schnitzer focused on world-class GT3 racing in 2019 as it was the team designated by BMW to tackle the Intercontinental GT Challenge following its exit from DTM. In 2020, the team only ticked one race entry but, for a while, it seemed like one race was enough as Schnitzer came close to once again winning the 24 Hours of the Nurburgring. Instead, the team's BMW M6 GT3 came home second. This may indeed end up being the last podium finish for a Schnitzer-entered car.

The history of Schnitzer Motorsport with BMW

Schnitzer Motorsport has always been a family-run affair and it all began back in 1963 when brothers Josef and Herbert Schnitzer got hold of a run-down Fiat which they decided to fix in order to go racing. Small-time hillclimb events in native Germany was where Schnitzer got its start in the world of motorsports and, already, a switch to BMW machinery occurred in 1964 when Josef Schnitzer campaigned a BMW 1800 TI (the ”New Class” sedan powered by the 1.8-liter version of the M10 four-pot). Josef continued to act as the driver while his brother Herbert worked as the chief mechanic although the two of them shared a common background in engineering meaning ideas on how to improve a car's behavior would bounce off either of them and that quickly began to translate into results on the hillclimb stages and, soon enough, the circuits.

The first title brought back to Freilassing, the place that the young team called home, was bagged by Josef in the precursor of the DTM, the German Touring Car Championship. Driving the 1800 TI that was upgraded in-house, Schnitzer took the spoils despite the fact that many of its rivals ran the TI/SA version that had been built by BMW from the outset to be better suited on the track or the odd rally stage (SA stood for 'Sport Ausfuehrung – or 'sports version'). It was in 1966 as well that Schnitzer made its debut on the European stage with the outfit showing up at the Aspern Aerodrome near Vienna for the Division 2+3 race that the ETCC held there in mid-March.

While Alan Mann Racing's dominant Lotus-Ford Cortina driven by Sir John Whitmore claimed victory, followed home by the factory-backed Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GTA of Andrea de Adamich, Josef Schnitzer finished 12th despite starting from fifth on the grid. Then, in July, the team ticked off the bucket list the feat of tackling an endurance race. This was also the second ETCC participation for Schnitzer as he and fellow tuner Hans-Peter Koepchen (the founder of the well-known Koepchen Tuning team that campaigned BMWs in the late '60s and early-to-mid-'70s) drove the 1800 TI in the Six Hours of the Nuerburgring (soon to be re-named as the 'Touring Car Grand Prix'). Unfortunately, the duo retired but a factory BMW 2000 TI finished second behind the plucky Autodelta Alfa of de Adamich and Teodoro Zeccoli.

To improve its chances of victory, the team signed Ernst Furtmayr and he duly won the European Hillclimb Championship title of 1968 and proved this was no fluke by getting two more, back-to-back, titles in 1969 and 1970.

Alfa Romeo and Fiat-Abarth factory driver Furtmayr (he scored class wins in such marquee events as the Nuerburgring 1,000-kilometer or the Monza 1,000-kilometer wearing Italian overalls) defected to BMW the very year that he won the title with Schnitzer but the factory team only benefitted from his services on a handful of occasions before quitting the ETCC at the end of '69 when BMW's honor was left to be defended by the tuners such as Schnitzer and Alpina.

This would've been an easier task had Ford not taken an interest in touring car racing that resulted in the Cologne-based factory team led by Jochen Neerpasch preparing the first-generation Capri to meet the requirements of Group 2. BMW responded with the 2800 CS, a sleek coupe that was the forerunner to the CSL. While BMW did offer some support to Alpina and Schnitzer (the latter also inking one of the first lucrative sponsorship deals in touring car racing history after partnering with Motul), the 2800 CS was no match to the so-called Cologne Capri that crushed BMWs coupes in both 1971 and 1972. Luckily, though, Schnitzer kept racing the 2002 TI which proved to be a reputable rival to Ford's own compact two-door model, the Escort RS 1600.

The following year, BMW returned to the ETCC as a factory team to beat Ford and it did so armed with two of its most precious assets: team boss Neerpasch and top driver Hans J. Stuck. The arrival of the factory team left Alpina and Schnitzer to fight over bread crumbs although Schnitzer did sign some top-flight names that year including Grand Prix regulars Henri Pescarolo and Vittorio Brambilla.

The latter was always fast in qualifying putting the team's CSL on the front row for the first two rounds of the season which yielded a third-place finish at the daunting Salzburgring in Austria where Brambilla shared the car with Jean-Pierre Jaussaud. Another front-row start in Sweden ended in a retirement caused by engine maladies, just like at Monza, and then the 'Batmobile' version of the CSL was brought forth complete with its famous wing and drilled splitter. Schnitzer felt that it could scale back its efforts seeing as the factory cars were clearly superior (although BMW did give Schnitzer and Alpina the new 3.5-liter, 24-valve engines to try out).

The 1974 season was lackluster since Schnitzer relied on some less-than-stellar drivers, 1971 European Hillclimb Champion Walter Brun who returned to the team after a brief spell with Alpina being the only stand-out name. However, this was due to change in 1975 when, amid the factory's decision to pull out of the ETCC once again and head to the US to contest the IMSA Camel GT Challenge, Schnitzer was a contender. Sadly, Zondler and Krebs lost out to Alpina's Alain Peltier although it was Schnitzer's Memphis-backed cars that were often the fastest of the lot. Krebs also missed the DRM title by a whisker - but Frenchman Jacques Lafitte was successful in his attempt to win the Formula 2 title in what was Schnitzer's maiden foray into open-wheel racing.

For 1976, Schnitzer moved over to the World Championship for Makes known today as the World Endurance Championship. Campaigning the most extreme version of the CSL, Schnitzer scored two wins (at the Nuerburgring and at the Oesterreichring, modern-day Red Bull Ring) to Alpina's naught. BMW ultimately lost the title to the much better-prepared Porsche team that had developed the 935 as a response to the new-for-1976 Group 5 regulations.

BMW's decision was to replace the CSL with the E21-generation 320i that was built to house both the 2.0-liter M12 four-pot and a turbocharged version, either with a capacity of 1.4-liters or 2.0-liters as seen in IMSA and at selected World Championship rounds. The 320i was the training ground of Neerpasch's new-fangled 'BMW Junioren' department. The trio of Marc Surer, Manfred Winkelhock, and Eddie Cheever would end up doing battle with Schnitzer's own 1977 Group 5 car, the BMW 2002-based Rodenstock machine that featured a turbocharged engine (the 'Junioren' works cars entered in DRM's secondary division ran the N/A version of the M12).

Klaus Ludwig won once in the car which also took pole position for the end-of-the-year Kyalami 1,000-kilometer race, beating both Ford-Zakspeed and the Juniors in the process. This probably angered Munich because, in a shock move, Schnitzer agreed to prepare a turbocharged version of the TA22-generation Toyota Celica. The car had debuted in late '77 but was heavily revised ahead of a full-on assault of the DRM's top class with Rolf Stommelen at the helm.

The project, bankrolled by Toyota Germany, was a profound failure with Stommelen only reaching the chequered flag once (in a lowly eighth at Mainz-Finthen). However, the team did enjoy a successful string of results down in the second division where Harald Ertl became champion driving a turbocharged BMW 320i.

Around that time, Herbert Schnitzer Sr., brought his half-brothers, Karl 'Charly' Lamm and Dieter Lamm into the team to help with the day-to-day operations since Herbert had to run the show. Soon enough, the two Lamms rose to become invaluable members of the team, Charly taking over the position of Team Manager while Dieter acted as Head of Workshop and Logistics. This formula remained intact up until 2014 when Dieter died at the age of 59.

But, while it lasted, the two Lamms brought Schnitzer countless laurels as the team achieved unheard-of levels of success. First in line was Dieter Quester's ETCC title that the Austrian won in 1983 behind the wheel of the Group A-spec BMW 635 CSI. Two years later, Schnitzer also conquered the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, Roberto Ravaglia, Gerhard Berger, and Marc Surer beating their team-mates, Dieter Quester, Markus Oestreich, and Johnny Cecotto. As you may realize from the names listed here, Schnitzer had, by 1985, regained the trust of BMW and was oftentimes considered to be the pukka works team of the Bavarian automaker.

This was proved by the fact that, when BMW debuted the E30 M3, it chose Schnitzer to run the factory team. Admittedly, it also helped that Roberto Ravaglia had crowned himself ETCC champion the year before with the now-outdated 635 CSI. The Italian and the M3 were a match made in heaven, one that resulted in two more titles in succession: 1987's WTCC title and 1988's ETCC title. The first-ever DTM title won by Schnitzer came in 1989 and, again, it was Ravaglia that delivered the goods. Meanwhile, ex-biker Johnny Cecotto won the Italian Touring Car title for Schnitzer that seam year.

More victories for the M3 E30 were still to come in 1991 and 1992, but the next Schnitzer-badged title offense that ended with the spoils of victory occurred in 1993 when Joachim Winkelhock became the British Touring Car Championship's first German champion. The FIA Asia-Pacific Touring Car Championship was Smoking Joe's next target and, sure enough, he was the champion of that series too, in 1994. Four years later, Ravaglia came back with a bang by winning the STW, Germany's Super Touring series.

The '90s ended on a high for Schnitzer which, again operating under the colors of BMW Motorsport, won the 24 Hours of Le Mans at the second time of asking. The car it pulled off this impressive feat with was the BMW V12 LMR, an evolution of 1998's V12 LM that proved fast but fragile. The LMR was also fast but wasn't fragile - a point that was proven by BMW after the LMR won the 12 Hours of Sebring in March of 1999. Then, in 2000, Schnitzer narrowly missed on the American Le Mans Series crown in a grudge match against the decade's juggernaut, Audi.

Following BMW's complete withdrawal from prototype racing caused by Munich's decision to pump cash into an ill-fated F1 program, Schnitzer returned to its roots and campaigned the controversial E46-generation M3 GTR. Its V-8 engine didn't match the inline-six unit you'd find in the road-going M3 and BMW's decision to build a 'homologation-special' M3 GTR road car with a V-8 impressed nobody and the car was banned at the conclusion of 2001. BMW was left fuming but Schnitzer had done its job winning the title in the GT category. Further down the line, the M3 GTR would be brought back into service to win the 24 Hours of the Nuerburgring which it did, twice: in 2004 and in 2005 to the chagrin of Zakspeed.

At the same time, Schnitzer prepared the BMWs running in the ETCC and then the WTCC under the 'BMW Team Germany' and 'BMW Team Brazil' banners. While Messrs. (Joerg and Dirk) Mueller and Augusto Farfus were always contenders (Schnitzer scored 25 race wins with the BMW 320i and the BMW 320si WTCC in five years), it was Team RBM's Andy Priaulx that kept winning the title. A return to GT racing also took place in 2009 when Schnitzer helped develop the BMW M3 GT2 that it would take to victory lane in the 2010 edition of the 24 Hours of the Nuerburgring. Schnitzer too campaigned the car in the Intercontinental Le Mans Challenge that included two less-than-stellar trips to Le Mans - the team's last to date.

In the 2010s, Team Schnitzer joined Team RMG, Team MTEK, and Team RBM to form BMW's four-fangled (if that is even something people say) attack on the DTM. Ex-Mercedes man Bruno Spengler, the most German out of all Canadians in the world, won the title during his first season with BMW and with Team Schnitzer in 2012 proving that you can debut in a series in the right way despite being out of it for over a decade.

In the last few years, Schnitzer kept being part of BMW's roster of DTM teams but also took an interest once more in GT racing, first campaigning the M6 GT3 in the hotly contested ADAC GT Masters before being given the task to represent BMW's interests in the sprawling Intercontinental GT Challenge, a round-the-globe series that bands together the world's most prestigious long-distance events that are open to GT3 cars: the 12 Hours of Bathurst, the 24 Hours of Spa, the 10 Hours of Suzuka, the 10 Hours of Indianapolis, and, last but not least, the Nine Hours of Kyalami (the 2020 edition of which will be on this weekend, December 12).

Team RBM has also played a key role in BMW's success over the years

Team RBM was born back in 1974 as Juma Racing ('Juma' being an abbreviation of team founder Julien Mampaey's name) and quickly began campaigning BMWs in the European Touring Car Championship (ETCC) and the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps. That was back in the days when the legendary endurance race held in the midst of the Ardennes forest catered towards sedans.

Juma Racing won the 24 Hours of Spa on three occasions in those early days, first in 1977 and again in 1982 and 1983 while grabbing the runner-up spot in every other year between '78 and '84. All of these wins were scored using BMW machinery. Initially, the weapon of choice was the Group 1 BMW 530I US (driven to victory in '77 by Eddy Joosen and Jean-Claude Andruet), and then the BMW 528i Group A was driven to victory in '82 before the gorgeous BMW 635 CSi took over the mantle and won in '83 establishing itself as one of the top cars in those early days of Group A touring car racing. Juma also came second-best in the ETCC in 1979, the last year of the BMW 3.0 CSL.

Mampaey's Juma team closed its doors in '86 but his son, Bart Mampaey, revived it as Racing Bart Mampaey (RBM) and didn't hesitate to rekindle the dormant relationship with BMW. Just three years later, benefitting from factory support, RBM conquered the Spa 24 Hours with the Super Touring-spec BMW 320i (E36) of Alain Cudini, Eric Van de Poele, and Marc Duez.

Thereafter, just like his old man, Bart stuck with the tin tops and, eventually, it paid off as Andy Priaulx became the ETCC champion in 2004 driving the Super 2000-spec BMW 320i (E46) that he would also carry to the title the following year. However, this time, Priaulx ended up conquering the newly-reborn World Touring Car Championship (WTCC). The Briton continued in much the same way grabbing two more titles in 2006 and 2007 (with the E90-generation 3-Series) before Chevrolet and Seat swamped BMW and the factory pulled the plug on its WTCC program at the end of 2010. But Munich's top brass proved that it held Mampaey in high regard when RBM was appointed as one of the teams that would run the BMW M3 DTM on the manufacturer's return to the legendary German series.

Nine seasons of tight racing followed, the Class 1 touring cars of the DTM certainly the most technologically advanced cars ever to be operated by RBM, a team that remained part of the scenery all the way through to the end of the current era which coincided with the 2020 championship finale at Hockenheim. Sadly, RBM never took the title in the modern DTM with the honor befalling Team Schnitzer (in 2012) and Team RMG in 2014 and 2016 respectively.