Marciello ‘Likes the Challenge’ of BMW Hypercar Debut

Raffaele Marciello felt that a desire to prove himself as a more versatile driver made him think “a change was needed” and led to him joining BMW’s factory driver roster and form part of Team WRT’s Hypercar program.

The Swiss driver joined BMW after calling time on a six-year stint with the Stuttgart manufacturer and was confirmed on Wednesday to be part of BMW M Team WRT’s six-man driver squad for the BMW M Hybrid V8’s debut campaign in the world championship.

Marciello initially joined Mercedes-AMG after transitioning away from single seater racing and developed into one of the top drivers in global GT3 competition, notably winning the FIA GT World Cup in Macau and the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa, amongst other accolades.

Stefan Wendl, the head of Mercedes-AMG customer racing, previously stated that Marciello had a desire to look for new pastures because of a desire to race at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and compete in prototype machinery.

Marciello explained that he opted for a change of manufacturers because of a wish to prove himself as a versatile driver away from Mercedes-AMG’s GT3 program.

“For me the change was needed, because I hear many times when you win with the same car, then you win because it’s also the car,” he told Sportscar365.

“It’s a bit like I think Valentino [Rossi] in the past when he was in Honda in MotoGP. If you change and you’re still competitive then like it’s nice because you show yourself that you can drive well with many different cars and [in] many different categories.

“So for me it’s nice to show the people that I can be quick in many cars. So for me the change was needed and then when I knew I had the chance that maybe I was able to do work with WRT and BMW, for sure it was a big thing for me.

“To be able to drive in WEC, I think it’s the biggest championship in prototypes, it [is] quite nice.  It will not be easy because there is many different things but I like the challenge.”

Early in 2023, before negotiations with BMW had even taken place, Marciello accidentally foreshadowed his future move when he took to social media and uploaded a photo with a BMW jacket as a joke, which came about after his then Akkodis ASP team boss Jerome Policand was announced to be driving with WRT in the Michelin Le Mans Cup.

“I posted a funny picture, I think it was in Brands Hatch when they announced Jerome was driving for BMW, but this was only a joke and many people took it too seriously,” Marciello laughed.

Marciello revealed that a phone call from WRT boss Vincent Vosse acted as the catalyst for the move, while discussions with BMW proper didn’t start until the second half of last year.

“Actually, it started with Vincent,” Marciello said. “He rang me around September. When you have the opportunity to join BMW, for sure then you take the chance.

“We started to talk after the summer more or less, September [or] October so I mean it was a bit later than people believed.

“Let’s say May was was a joke and people took it seriously. Actually if you look now it’s funny because it looked like I announced back in May.”

Despite having almost no prototype experience outside of a Rolex 24 at Daytona appearance with High Class Racing last year, Marciello expects that he won’t have too much trouble adapting to the current generation of top class cars.

“It’s not like the [old] LMP1 cars that are like really, really quick,” he said.

“When I speak with the drivers that drove the Hypercar already, they tell me it’s like a big GT. I need to adapt myself for sure but it was quite okay when I was driving in the past with high downforce.

“I believe it’s harder to change between GT brands rather than [between] GT and Hypercar because maybe you have to drive two different cars but [in the] same category.

“I think when you go [to] a completely different concept of car it shouldn’t be a big problem but we’ll see what happens.”