“As our company places stronger focus on sustainability initiatives, our participation in Formula One becomes less a key promoter of this engagement.” – BMW Chairman Norbert Reithofer

Cynics are claiming that BMW is pulling out of auto racing’s highest-profile series because the team hasn’t performed very well against Ferrari, McLaren-Mercedes, and several independent teams. And they’re right, up to a point – BMW hasn’t gotten much for the hundreds of millions of euros they’ve invested in the effort over the last three years. But good little cynics that they are, they also dismissed BMW’s Strategy Number ONE, announced late last year in response to the swirl of crises that are signaling the end of an automotive era. The SN1 vows in no uncertain terms that BMW’s priority is to develop sustainable product technologies. So a racing program with a sustenance regimen like Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors ain’t the prize of BMW’s garden any more.

In the 1970s, F-1 engine, aerodynamic and materials technology found its way into more efficient road vehicles. Formula One/Grand Prix racing has led to numerous production car innovations in the last century, and as one of the most demonstrative expressions of state-of-the-art technology and big-bore industrial strategy, F-1 has spurred competition and served as a barometer of political, technical, economic and social change. It has survived the vicissitudes of war, depression, and an immutably congenital infantile egotism unique in the world.

It’s likely that F-1 will emerge on the other side of the green revolution, but as it stands today – each team expends hundreds of millions of dollars to tweak out a millisecond from its fighter-jet-on-wheels – F-1 has nothing to do with anyone’s transportation priorities. So kudos to BMW for getting off the F-1 train because it isn’t going in the direction of the company’s goals, and most of all for doing what it said it would do.