A significant chapter in North American sports activities automobile racing is coming to an in depth. BMW and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL) will half methods on the finish of the 2025 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season, concluding a 17-year partnership that delivered a number of titles, iconic wins, and helped re-establish BMW as a drive in American endurance racing.
The information, first reported by RACER.com, indicators a strategic realignment for BMW Motorsport. The German marque is anticipated to consolidate its top-level prototype racing underneath one banner, with Belgian staff WRT set to take over as the only real manufacturing facility staff for BMW’s M Hybrid V8 program. WRT at the moment fields BMW’s Hypercar entry within the FIA World Endurance Championship and can reportedly develop its duties to IMSA starting in 2026. RLL, which knowledgeable workers of the choice earlier this summer time, is already exploring new alternatives past the present season.
“We’re clearly disillusioned that our racing relationship with BMW is coming to an finish after so a few years the place we’ve had numerous success with them,” staff principal Bobby Rahal instructed RACER.com. “It was a privilege and an honor to symbolize BMW on the circuits of America and in Canada, and now it’s time to maneuver onto new issues.”
We reached out to BMW Motorsport USA for a remark, however they weren’t capable of “touch upon any plans for IMSA for 2026” at this cut-off date.
A Historic Run of Success
The BMW-RLL alliance started in 2009 within the American Le Mans Sequence and shortly delivered outcomes. The staff captured the GT2 Groups’ title in 2010 and swept the Groups’, Producers’, and Drivers’ championships in 2011 with the E92 M3 GT, establishing itself as a benchmark within the class. That momentum continued by successive platforms—Z4 GTLM, M6 GTLM, M8 GTE—with standout victories at marquee occasions like Lengthy Seaside, Laguna Seca, and the Twelve Hours of Sebring. The top got here with back-to-back wins on the Rolex 24 At Daytona in 2019 and 2020, cementing RLL’s legacy in fashionable IMSA historical past.
The LMDh Period
The partnership prolonged into the hybrid prototype period in 2023, when RLL debuted the M Hybrid V8 in IMSA’s new GTP class. Though outcomes have been initially elusive amid fierce competitors from Porsche, Cadillac, and Acura, the staff scored an inherited win at Watkins Glen in 2023 and claimed its first on-track GTP victory at Indianapolis in 2024.
This yr, RLL has demonstrated front-running tempo, capturing pole positions at Daytona, Sebring, Lengthy Seaside, and Laguna Seca, although a victory has remained simply out of attain. The ultimate three races—at Street America (Aug. 3), Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Sept. 21), and Street Atlanta’s Petit Le Mans (Oct. 11)—provide the staff an opportunity to cap off the period with an announcement end result.
Whereas RACER’s Marshall Pruett studies that Staff WRT is anticipated to imagine accountability for BMW’s IMSA GTP program beginning in 2026—including to its current FIA WEC Hypercar marketing campaign with the M Hybrid V8—BMW has but to formally verify the transfer. The Belgian squad seems to have emerged because the frontrunner following a delay within the resolution earlier this yr, reportedly to permit time for U.S. commerce coverage round tariffs to stabilize. Till BMW makes a proper announcement, the construction and scope of its North American prototype effort are nonetheless topic to alter.
