This year the winner of the BMW M Award will take home a brand-new BMW M3 Touring

The partnership between BMW and MotoGP is a long-standing relationship, dating back to 1999, when the German brand began supplying the motorcycle world championship with the vehicles used for Safety Car duties, perhaps the most visible and representative vehicle, although BMW also puts the medical car on the asphalt of every world championship circuit.

Four years after this relationship began, Dorna, the organiser of MotoGP, and BMW started awarding a prize called the BMW M Award, in which the rider with the most pole positions over the course of a season is rewarded with a BMW M model. Over the years, several illustrious names have taken one of these models home: Valentino Rossi, Casey Stoner, Marc Márquez, Jorge Lorenzo, Sete Gibernau, Nicky Hayden and, more recently, Fabio Quartararo, who still holds the MotoGP Champion title.

The championship battle this season is extremely tight, with Quartararo, Aleix Espargaró and Pecco Bagnaia as the three clearest contenders for the title, separated by very few points. But if the championship fight is hard-fought, the battle for pole positions is also close, with Bagnaia slightly ahead with four poles, followed by Aleix Espargaró, Jorge Martín and Johann Zarco with two poles each, so any of these three who manages to take one will move back into the running for the BMW M Award.

And what prize awaits this year’s MotoGP rider with the most poles? Without a doubt, a very special model, because after many years of requests from the brand’s fans, BMW has finally decided to add the M3 Touring to its catalogue, making it the most sporting version of the popular German sports saloon. Furthermore, to mark its launch, the M3 Touring has begun this season performing Safety Car duties, also wearing a very special livery to celebrate the 50th anniversary of BMW M, which also features all of BMW’s Safety Cars in MotoGP since 1999.

The BMW M3 Touring that the winning rider of the 20th edition of the BMW M Award will take home features the spectacular Frozen Black paint on its bodywork and has no chrome trim on the exterior; the whole approach is black, giving it an even more sporting and menacing look. Inside, the colour scheme follows the same pattern, with Merino leather upholstery painted black. Let us remember that the M3 Touring uses a 3,000 cc inline six-cylinder engine that delivers 510 CV of power along with 650 Nm of torque, allowing it to reach 100 km/h in just 3.6 seconds.