WRT says bye to Audi and hello to BMW

One of the most historic partnerships of GT racing and of the GT3 class is coming to an end after the 2022 season is over, with Belgian team WRT ending his period as an Audi customer team after 13 years of history that were literally the starting point of Yves Weerts and Vincent Vosse’s team, as they switch allegiance to BMW.

While the long time partnership between the Ingolstadt manufacturer and the Baudour based team started back in 2009, when the first examples of the first generation Audi R8 LMS GT3 were bought to compete in BelCar and FFSA GT, along with the 24 Hours of Spa, with a quick expansion to other competitions, which included to biggest symbol of success of the squad, which is the SRO GT Endurance Cup, at the time called Blancpain Endurance Series, and then things were just expanding, with DTM being also another part of their partnership, as well the Trophée Andros in rallycross.

Just in the SRO competitions alone, WRT is a five time teams champion and three times drivers champion in the Endurance Cup, with also a whopping eight teams titles and five drivers titles in the Sprint Cup, along with four teams titles and three drivers titles in the GT World Challenge Europe as a whole. Outside the SRO competitions, the WRT-Audi combo also achieved victories in the 24 Hours of Zolder, 24 Hours of Nürburgring, 24 Hours of Dubai and FIA GT World Cup.

WRT was preparing to take the next step of their partnership with Audi, as they were the leading candidate to be the team running the Audi LMDh project, which got cut short as Audi chose to join Formula 1 as a power unit manufacturer, leaving WRT without a next step to take while having all LMP2 class titles in the European Le Mans Series and in the FIA World Endurance Championship with an ORECA 07.

The final decision was announced this Tuesday (02), when WRT released a series of social media posts communicating the end of the deal with Audi, and immediately announcing that will be a BMW customer team from 2023, being the leading of their Bavarian effort in FIA WEC with their new BMW M Hybrid V8 LMDh, and while the GT3 class was also mentioned in the breakdown announcement, it is unclear how the program with the BMW M4 GT3 will be for WRT, despite the usual practice that WRT always of featuring multiple cars in the GT World Challenge Europe.

WRT is a major force joins a good list of BMW customer teams, which includes rivals ROWE Racing and Walkenhorst Motorsport, and will certainly compete for a share of the factory driver pool of the Bavarian manufacturer.

PHOTOS: WRT