The Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters is heading to Munich next month, racing right in BMW’s backyard at the stadium built for the ill-fated 1972 Olympic Games. And when it does, the Bavarian automaker will take the occasion to unveil a preview of what we can expect from its new DTM racer.

BMW has been working on its return to the German touring car series since announcing its plans last year. Probably even earlier. That’s set to take place next year, with BMW joining arch-rivals Mercedes-Benz and Audi for the first time in 18 years.
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Early this morning (out the door at 3:00 am) we headed to Pikes Peak for the second of three practice sessions this week before race day on Sunday. Our final destination was the summit, where the Unlimited Class would be tackling the final third of the course. The past couple years more and more of the road has been paved, and for this year the final section has been completely paved over. The fresh tarmac should knock a few seconds off each car’s overall time, increasing the chances that 2011 might be the year that the overall course record will be broken.
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The day is almost upon us when Volkswagen will unleash the ferocious Golf24 on the Green Hell. The hatchback endurance racer, which helps celebrate the GTI’s 35 anniversary, was first revealed back in February, and is finally set to take on the Nürburgring race this weekend.

As you may recall, the Golf24 packs the turbocharged five-cylinder engine and all-wheel drive of the Audi TT RS, but tuned up to 450 horsepower and nearly 400 pound-feet of torque with a six-speed sequential gearbox, all mounted underneath some heavily revised competition-spec sheetmetal.
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The 89th-annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb kicked things off early today with the first practice runs on the mountain. We’ll be following the Unlimited Class, whose drivers will be contesting for the overall victory and the elusive ten-minute mark, and this morning they took on the middle portion of the course for the first of three practice sessions. This section is completely paved, but is one of the most difficult due to the high number of sharp switchbacks and extreme elevation change. It also makes for some picturesque views, as evidenced by the photos in the included image gallery.

Things are looking promising for the main contenders, particularly with Rhys Millen who looked incredibly fast and didn’t seem to be suffering any of the problems that he dealt with last year. “I think we just went about a second and a half faster than last year [in the section], and overall I’m really happy,” he told us. “We still have some oddities with the shift linkage, but it’s our first time trying the manual shifter this year. Other than that the car is rock solid and I’m really happy.”
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We just had seat time in a pre-production 208-horsepower Mini John Cooper Works Coupe on a little 0.7-mile Austrian circuit. By now you’ve all seen the 2012 Cooper Coupe officially revealed and they’re still popping up testing on public roads around the Nürburgring in slight camo mode.

Coincidence? Nay. This weekend – 25 and 26 June, 2011 – the 39th running of the wildly popular Nürburgring 24-hour race takes place. There will be 250,000 fans in attendance and they shall behold, among other things (barring the onset of beer goggles and thick barbecue smoke), this Mini John Cooper Works Coupe Endurance competing in the “SP 3T” class.

We were shown this wee beast in a secret tent off to the side during our recent Austria test, but now the truth can be told. This official factory effort by Mini Deutschland is Mini’s world premiere in 24-hour endurance racing. Here’s hoping it can handle the 14.2-mile Nürburgring-Nordschleife for a day in really fast traffic.
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Just what is a “world record” drift? That is the question posed by 2010 Formula Drift champion Vaughn Gittin, Jr. and many of his fellow professional drifters, following the announcement by Mercedes-Benz that it had set a new drifting record over this past weekend. According to the German automaker, Mauro Calo drifted a C63 AMG around a skidpad for 7,572 feet, topping Gittin’s original record of 6,285 feet set in December of 2008 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Impressive, but maybe not so much. Is circling a flat skidpad in a continuous loop until one of the tires blows considered drifting? Or, is real drifting a skill that requires a lot more talent?
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We’re still sorting through the thousands of images we captured at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, but we had to bring you the photos of the individual class winners before anything else. First up, of course, is the #2 Audi Sport Team Joest R18 TDI that had to fend off a quartet of Peugeot 908s all alone after the fellow Audi teams suffered massive crashes. The remaining Audi team ran nearly a perfect race, though, and managed to capture the overall victory just seconds ahead of the #9 Peugeot 908.
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