Rast, Van der Linde, Frijns to Drive 20th BMW Art Car

Photo: BMW

BMW M Motorsport has confirmed that its No. 20 BMW M Hybrid V8 entry for the 24 Hours of Le Mans will become the 20th BMW Art car.

Designed by artist Julie Mehretu, the Hypercar entry will be driven by the full season FIA World Endurance Championship trio of Rene Rast, Sheldon van der Linde and Robin Frijns.

The design, which is currently in progress, will be BMW’s first art car since 2017 when the John Baldessari-designed BMW M6 GTLM competed in the Rolex 24 a Daytona, followed later that year by the augmented reality BMW M6 GT3 art car by Cao Fei at the FIA GT World Cup in Macau.

Mehretu is working with BMW on a three-dimensional format utilizing a film wrap that’s in accordance with FIA regulations. It will be presented at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on May 21.

“For the design of the 20th BMW Art Car, Mehretu uses the color and form vocabulary of an existing large-format painting from a more recent series of works: obscured photographs, dotted grids, neon-colored spray paint and Mehretu’s iconic gestural markings give her design an abstract visual form,” a statement from the German manufacturer read.

“She transfers the resulting image motif as a high-resolution photograph onto the vehicle’s contours using a 3D mapping technique. This creates the unique artistic foiling with which the BMW M Hybrid V8 will compete in the Le Mans race.”

Mehretu added: “The creative play of what you can do in this new three-dimensional space and how many imaginations and inventions are played out to build it is highly instructive.

“It is not just the car itself but the designers and their deliberations as well as and foremost the drivers and their desires and aspirations which make it become this place of dreams where painting, conceptual art, aerodynamics, speed and aesthetics can participate.”

It will mark BMW’s first art car that will compete at Le Mans since the Jeff Koons-designed BMW M3 GT2 in 2010.

“The prospect of competing in a BMW Art Car at the 24 Hours of Le Mans is an additional incentive for the entire M Motorsport team to prepare the BMW M Hybrid V8 as perfectly as possible for this big stage,” said BMW M CEO Franciscus van Meel.

“In the 100th year of the race’s existence and 25 years after BMW’s last victory at Le Mans, winning there with a BMW Art Car would be the greatest possible success for all of us.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John