Finnish racer Markus Palttala won the 2014 BMW Sports Trophy. Palttala drove the Turner Motorsport Z4 GTD in the Tudor United SportsCar Championship series, and also drove a Z4 GT3 for Marc VDS in Europe. The announcement was made at BMW’s year-end Motorsport awards ceremony and party in Munich.
Dane Cameron, Palttala’s co-driver in the Turner Z4, and winner of the TUSC GTD drivers’ championship in 2014, finished second in the standings. Turner’s Paul Dalla Lana had won the Sports Trophy in 2011, and Will Turner had finished third in the standings in 2006.
Turner said, “First I want to congratulate both Dane and Markus for their performances this past season, they were honestly the ‘dream team’ together in the BMW Z4 GTD. It is great to see that BMW recognizes both of our drivers for all the hard work and dedication they put in this year. The awards ceremony and party is always an excellent experience and I am happy we can be here again.”
Four more US racers finished in the top 25: Tom Capizzi, who campaigned a 325i in the Pro-IT Series in the Northeast, was third in Sports Trophy points, Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge drivers’ champion Trent Hindman finished eleventh, Pro-IT racer Robert Nimkoff finished twelfth, and Hindman’s Fall-Line M3 teammate John Edwards finished twenty-fourth.
BMW also awards a Sports Trophy to teams. This year’s winner was the German Adrenalin Motorsports team that campaigned an M235i Racing in the new M235i Racing Cup class run in conjunction with the VLN Endurance series.
The Sports Trophies are awarded to privateer teams and drivers. BMW motorsport director Jens Marquardt said, “To a certain degree, the BMW Sports Trophy epitomizes the DNA of BMW in motorsport. For over 50 years these competitions have allowed us to acknowledge the most successful privateer teams and drivers, who enjoy success around the world with BMW racing cars, thus making them excellent ambassadors for our brand. In 2014, our team monitored and recorded the results of the BMW drivers and teams in a total of 60 racing series and events. This amounted to an incredible 6,000 individual results from 1,400 drivers. It is impressive how many drivers and teams around the world put their faith in BMW cars.” —Brian S. Morgan
