Interview with Dr Mario Theissen, Director of BMW Motorsport

[Blue_Tires]

As I approach the headquarters of BMW Motorsport in Munich it’s snowing and I am fortunate that the taxi driver knows which building we are seeking. We are in BMW City, after all, amongst many similar buildings.

It is quiet, with little overt indication of what goes on within. Just a typical BMW sign outside, and a few road cars gathering a light dusting of snow in the parking area. You can tell quite a lot about an organization by its corporate headquarters, and also by its leaders.

Today I am meeting Dr. Mario Theissen, BMW Motorsport Director, as they head into 2010, with no Formula 1 programme for the first time in more than a decade.

Substance before Style
Once inside the building, the reception area is low-key, too, containing a small collection of recent racers – an E92-based M3GT, Augusto Farfus’ 2009 E90 3-series WTCC car, one of the infamous E46 M3GTRs and a Formula BMW open wheeler along with some motorsport engines. A handful of trophies sit on plinths, with 3 large illuminated cabinets containing a further – impressive – collection of silverware.

None of the bright lights, extravagant architecture and themed presentation of the nearby BMW World and BMW Museum here, however. When you consider how much of BMW’s coveted image is founded upon its sporting credentials and the relationship between its road cars and its racers, this first view of the heart of its Motorsport operation is curiously downbeat. But perhaps that is good news. Maybe the money gets spent on what is actually important, rather than what just looks good. That definitely used to be the rule with the M cars, anyway.

Formula 1 and the Strategy Shift
If you have watched F1 in the last few years, and been paying attention, you would have seen Mario Theissen. As high stress – if you are not winning – high visibility jobs go, being an F1 Team Principal is right up there with Premiership football managers. So I can’t help thinking that a part of Theissen might have been secretly pleased when the BMW board announced, last July, that the company was pulling out of this branch of the sport at the end of the 2009 season.

He is a tall, quite youthful 50 something, dressed in the typical ‘business casual’ style that you find so often in Germany. His office is a tidy person’s dream, with an almost complete lack of clutter or decoration. Just a few scale model cars here and there, to hint at the automotive world that surrounds us. His frameless glasses add a slightly scholarly air, backed up by a quiet and measured speaking style, in excellent English.

He explains the rationale behind the withdrawal.

MT: “There was a shift in overall corporate strategy. The board decided that Motorsport should be more clearly directed towards technologies which are relevant for future mobility, and although we will always be in motor sport, F1 did not comply with the mainstream of this new strategy. On the other hand F1 takes most of the resources in this area, and so this brought about the decision to stop F1 and focus on other areas of motor sport as well as other things that came about with the new strategy.”

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