Oliver WhiteBMW driver Nick Heidfeld performed a demonstration run at the company’s Munich factory earlier today. As a way of thanking the staff of BMW who regularly watch the races and follow the squad’s progression around the world, Heidfeld performed a series of donuts and spoke with employees at the plant. World Touring Car driver Jorg Muller was also present, driving his BMW 320si. Team boss Mario Theissen said that transporting factory workers to the races was very difficult to achieve, so wanted to put on a show in order to praise their support for the Formula One operation.
It is nice to give the workforce something back. Nick Heidfeld.
Heidfeld eventually damaged his front wing with his driving antics, but more than 5,000 people attended to watch the F1.08 in action.
We’re well aware that a lot of people in the various departments are keenly following our fortunes and have bets on our results. However, it is not possible to involve the workforce properly at the circuits, so we had to come up with something special instead.
It is wonderful to see the BMW employees getting behind the sport. Support from within the company really helps us and gives us extra incentives. Mario Theissen.
BMW currently lead the constructors title by a point, while Heidfeld sits in second in the driver’s race with team mate Robert Kubica in joint-third (officially fourth when results a back-counted). BMW will be hoping they can continue their pace in to the European season which begins in Barcelona this weekend.
Here is something interesting. I am a BMW motorsports fan, so I went to http://www.bmw.com and there is nothing about this on the website, not even a “BMW in the news” link at all! There is not even a link from the homepage to BMW Motorsports, much less the F1 site. I had to go to the sitemap to find buried within there the motorsports website, which then took me to the F1 website. about 10 minutes and dozens of clicks, just to find out about their F1 news.
So there, you would think there were pics like above, or maybe some video of this? Nothing. Just 3 “avant garde” photos of Nick that could have been from anywhere, loaded up with Adobe Flash, taking 20 seconds per pic to load up.
Why do all this PR if you aren’t even going to let the fans share it or even find it??????
The image shown is actually of the launch back in January. I couldn’t find any either. However, Heidfeld, as shown in the image, did drive the car across one of the BMW factory floors.
That is odd though. I know that Toyota Motorsport is actually separate to Toyota, and Mercedes engines were built by Ilmor before Daimler-Chrysler brought them out. It is possible that BMW Sauber are owned by a separate company to BMW (for financial reasons or whatever), and thus they cannot promote one through the other.
That’s was really nice to Nick Heidfeld. I am sure that the BMW workforce had appreciated this actions. It shows that Nick care about what the workforce is doing and it is also a good support to them.
That is silly. I thought the manufacturers were in F1 for PR purposes?
Sidepodcast have the video. Link…