After marking its mark in Europe, Team WRT is starting to write its American story

Before BMW M Team WRT was confirmed as the German manufacturer’s new service provider to the factory IMSA GTP project, the team from Belgium was already laying the groundwork by assembling its staff for its first full season in American motorsport.

Now that the beginning of WRT’s first season operating headquarters on two continents is just days away, RACER had the chance to sit down with Bernhard Demmer, the Program Director for BMW M Team WRT’s IMSA GTP and WEC Hypercar operations, to talk about how it all came together in only a few months.

“One of the main decisions in the very beginning (was) where to locate the team. When you look at the U.S. market, we identified two hub areas,” Demmer says.

Those potential hubs were Indianapolis and Charlotte. WRT ultimately established its base just north of Charlotte in Kannapolis, within the massive Haas campus, sharing a space not only with the Haas Formula 1 Team, but also with Haas Factory Team in NASCAR.

WRT has won major GT races in the United States before, part of the team’s incredible legacy as the greatest GT3 racing team of all time. But Haas has provided crucial support as the team steps into IMSA full-time.

“We are sub-renting from them, and we have a service package that we can utilize all their facilities, which was a great help at the beginning,” Demmer says. 

“We have access to all their racing facilities, but at the same time, they also take care of the simple daily things like power, light, gas, cleaners, security – all these kind of things that keep the facility running, that was a big help.

“Over the past weeks, when we had so much things to do, there was always something to buy, to get, to organize, to manufacture. And of course, the first point of contact was always Haas, and that was a huge help. They are true racers, all the people who are working there.

“It’s really a very easy and very pragmatic atmosphere, very focused on getting the results quickly.

“I think we would be well behind without their help. So it’s really appreciated, what they do. And we’ve actually already formed kind of a nice – I wouldn’t call it 'friendship' yet, but it’s more than a partnership already.”

With a base established, WRT also had to bring in the people to make this operation come together, meshing the racing cultures seen in Europe and North America. “We said, 'we will have a mixture of American and European people – and of course, prefer people who have IMSA experience, whether they’re coming from Europe or from America,'” Demmer explains.

“We went from the top to the bottom, starting with key positions like the management, the administrative side, lead engineering, lead mechanics, and looking for people that would match these requirements. That was the baseline.

“And once we had the go, and we had the contract signed, we went into the market out of the previous projects that the leadership had. Obviously, we had contacts – from my side, as I was with Porsche for many years, I had contacts with the people who were running for Porsche, for example, in IMSA.” 

Morgan Brady, the former manager of CORE Autosport that ran the factory Porsche GT Team in GTLM, provided recommendations to Demmer for where to find talent. “And then throughout the WRT network, through the BMW network, we kind of spread out everywhere to find the key positions.”

For BMW M Team WRT’s debut at the Rolex 24 At Daytona, the team consists of 39 people – including five from the WEC Hypercar team, three brought in from previous BMW partner Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL), and another five from direct competitors.

“The rest is pretty much a selection from various areas – competitors, LMDH, prototypes, GT,” Demmer says.

WRT was considering both Indianapolis and Charlotte when looking for where to establish its U.S. base, eventually finding a home within the Haas campus in Kannapolis, NC. Jake Galstad/IMSA

As a sub-leader, Demmer recruited Ben Wright, formerly of Hendrick Motorsports – where he was Program Leader for the NASCAR Le Mans Garage 56 program – and Pratt Miller Motorsports.

In time, Demmer hopes to fill out a 44-person staff and build a strong culture emphasizing WRT’s “We Are A Team” motto.

“At the moment, the stress is definitely not helping, but we have a high focus on it,” he says.

“We want to have it from the beginning that the people understand that we are really trying to work as a team – not only on the professional side, but also on the human side. We had at the Sanctioned Test, and actually over the whole winter period, people moving over.

“It’s now the goal to have them well-integrated, at the same time, building an independent U.S. team.”

All of it has come together very quickly, considering the challenge of getting a crew together to run the November IMSA Sanctioned Test at Daytona.

“We had a lot less people recruited at that time, so we had to utilize a lot of the WEC people which were still busy with finalizing the WEC season in Bahrain,” Demmer recalls. “In the Sanctioned Test, we were utilizing still the trucks from RLL, most of the equipment, tools, et cetera, and the cars came from their workshop.”

This also included many more people from RLL, which was also trying to quickly assemble its new GTD Pro effort with McLaren.
“Now, everything came straight from us, and we have to take care of everything,” Demmer says.

WRT’s current tally of championships now stands at 36 Drivers’ titles, and 32 Teams’ titles, won around the world in GT and LMP2 racing. 
Even with all that success, Demmer remains humble when it comes to WRT’s first full-time foray into American motorsport, as well as the first season for the latest evolution of its BMW M Hybrid V8 race cars – cars that had won a race every year for the last three years in IMSA, but have yet to win in WEC with WRT at the helm.

“At the moment, the main focus of the whole team is to kind of nail the basics,” he says. “We want to really focus on making the most out of the Evo car – we learn new things about it every day.

“We want to get our operation as clean as possible, the basics like communication, pit stops, having the car run without any issues. And then afterwards, and this will most likely all start really only after Daytona, is looking into fine-tuning things and stuff. So it’s really a step-by-step approach, and we’ll focus on the main priority topics only here.”

Down the road, Demmer says that WRT will grow in America to the point that it may want to establish its own independent base, but for now, with the team at its starting point, those discussions are still in the very early stages.

Overall, he is extremely proud to drive what could turn into another great chapter in the history of BMW’s rich history in North American motorsport.

“I was always a big fan of IMSA – I never did a full season before, but now I finally have the chance,” Demmer says. “And I really enjoy a project coming together.

“Having a project which is actually double the size, with a lot of synergies and a lot of things that just work better when they come together, is really enjoyable. I’m really excited – but I’m also very careful, at the moment, because it’s such a big challenge. And it will take time to get to the full level that we want to achieve.”