The BMW M1 Procar Championship emerged from BMW's desire to promote its new mid-engined M1 supercar in a racing context that would attract maximum visibility and prestige. Neerpasch devised a concept that tied the series directly to the Formula One World Championship calendar, with Procar races held as support events at various European rounds of the Formula One season. The use of identical, identically modified BMW M1 cars ensured that driver skill would be the primary differentiating factor.
The championship drew participants from across the top tiers of international motorsport. Drivers from the Formula One World Championship, the World Sportscar Championship, the European Touring Car Championship, and other leading series all took part, making Procar one of the most talent-dense competitions of its era.
A distinctive feature of the 1979 Procar series was its qualifying mechanism for Formula One drivers. The five fastest Formula One drivers in practice at each host Grand Prix weekend automatically earned a place in the Procar race, sitting in a reserved group of entries. This innovation ensured that the most prominent names in global motorsport would regularly appear in Procar events, elevating the series' profile considerably.
The BMW M1 cars used in competition were uniformly prepared and mechanically identical, preventing any team from gaining a significant mechanical advantage. This purity of concept was central to Neerpasch's vision and gave Procar its reputation as a genuine test of driving ability rather than engineering resources.
The inaugural 1979 championship ran as a support category to selected European rounds of the Formula One season. Austrian driver Niki Lauda, already a two-time Formula One World Champion and one of the most technically accomplished drivers of the period, won the first Procar title. Lauda's clinical approach and deep technical understanding proved well-suited to the demands of one-make competition, where setup differences were minimal and race craft was paramount.
The 1979 series attracted participation from a broad roster of international stars, reinforcing the concept's credibility and demonstrating that a one-make format could produce compelling racing without sacrificing the prestige that comes from elite driver entry.
In 1980 the championship expanded its calendar somewhat, with events extending beyond the Formula One support-race format to include some standalone appearances. Brazilian driver Nelson Piquet, who would go on to claim his first Formula One World Championship title that same year, won the 1980 Procar crown. Piquet's victory reinforced the series' standing as a genuinely competitive championship contested at the highest level.
BMW decided not to continue the Procar championship beyond 1980, choosing instead to redirect motorsport resources toward the company's entrance into Formula One as an engine supplier — a programme that would eventually see the BMW four-cylinder turbo engine power Brabham to Nelson Piquet's 1983 Formula One World Championship.
Despite its brief existence, the BMW M1 Procar Championship left a lasting mark on motorsport. It demonstrated that a well-conceived one-make series could attract the world's finest drivers and generate genuine racing drama, helping establish the template for premium monomarca competitions that followed. The series is fondly remembered as a unique convergence of Formula One personalities and sports car racing at a time when the boundaries between disciplines were more permeable than they would later become.
The championship produced some of the most memorable multi-disciplinary driver matchups of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the BMW M1 itself — both as a road car and in its Procar specification — remains one of the most celebrated machines of the period in collector and historic racing circles.