Rumors of BMW and Aprilia entering MotoGP in 2012 have been floating around for some time now, with Aprilia more or less denying that they want to enter the premier racing series, but BMW has a slightly different attitude, and BMW’s General Director of BMW Motorrad bigwig, Hendrik Von Kuenheim arrival during the Qatar GP sent tongues wagging again on the topic.
Apparently Dorna and BMW had set up a secret (not so secret if everyone is mentioning it) meeting to discuss something other than the German manufacturer supplying their cars as safety vehicles for the races (they’ve got a contract with Dorna until 2016) which could mean that BMW is finally negotiating their long awaited arrival in MotoGP.
According to this week’s Motosprint magazine edition, Von Kuenheim seems all for MotoGP and isn’t actually quite that happy with the image return that they get off Superbikes and wants something more, which MotoGP could give them.
But this manager wasn’t the head of the division, when Herbert Diess’s idea of entering the prototype racing series in 2007 was shot down, especially after Berthold Hauser showed the company that the initial racing budget to enter MotoGP was around 40 million euros compared to just the 12 million needed to compete in Superbikes, and since racing doesn’t come cheap, Superbikes was chosen.
The new MotoGP 2012 rules are completely oriented in capturing new manufacturers and give non factory teams the opportunity to use production based engines, but it seems that BMW was previously told by Dorna they couldn’t enter the series as a CRT, but as a full fledged manufacturer, which BMW seems to seriously pondering on.
And always according to the Italian sports weekly, BMW’s MotoGP project would see current Moto2 leader Stefan Bradl as a rider with Red Bull as the main sponsor, but another juicy rumor has it that Leon Haslam signed up with BMW with the promise he could have another shot at MotoGP.
Sound sort of far-fetched and something out of moto matrix world? Yeah … but these rumors keep us fueled between races, but you also never know if there’s some kernel of truth behind this gossip.