BMW has rolled out its new challenger that it hopes will pick up where the back-to-back championship-winning M3 left off. As of today, it is no longer possible to make modifications to the most fundamental areas of the new M4. Upcoming pre-season testing will now primarily focus on optimising detailed aspects of the total package and understanding how to exhaust the full potential of the new car ahead of the start of the season in Hockenheim on May 4.
BMW Motorsport engineers started to look ahead to 2014 and began working on the development of the new contender well before the start of the 2013 DTM season. The first model made its first appearance in the wind tunnel at the BMW Group’s Aero Lab on April 22, almost a fortnight before the opening race of the 2013 season.
In the summer of 2013, while continuing with aerodynamic testing, the experts in Munich then turned their attention to designing new suspension parts which had their first on-track outing in December 2013, albeit still within the BMW M3 DTM at that point.
The final parts for the chassis of the BMW M4 DTM were in production by the turn of the year, allowing the BMW teams to assemble the first models of the new car in January and February. Finally. three hundred days after the first test in the wind tunnel, the BMW M4 DTM took to the track for its track debut in Monteblanco in Spain on February 11 2014.