One Woman, One Diesel - Claudia Hürtgen Takes The Sports Trophy.

The BMW Sports Trophy was called into being in the early 1960s. The pot of prize money for privateer BMW drivers competing in various classes around the world has now grown to a quarter of a million euros.

Second place (25,000 euros) also went to a German: Marc Hennerici (24, Mayen) collected a tally of 504.3 points as the Junior Champion in the Long-Distance Championship and in races in the Procar Series, the WTCC and the 24-hour marathon in the Eifel. Like Hürtgen, Hennerici was at the wheel of a BMW 120d, while also driving a BMW E46 320i in some competitions.

Picking up bronze was US-American Will Turner (38, Amesbury/USA) after winning the GrandAm Cup. With his triumph in this series and successes in the Speed World Challenge, he accumulated 470.6 Sports Trophy points and was rewarded with 20,000 euros.

The list of honoured privateer drivers swelled from the traditional 20 to 25 for the first time. "It reflects the expanded product range in our customer sports programme," commented BMW Motorsport Director Mario Theissen. "The BMW 120d and Z4 M Coupé models lined up on the racing grid for the first time. The attractiveness of our products drew more applications for the Sports Trophy in 2006 than ever before. Their performance along with the enthusiastic commitment of the drivers and teams secured triumphs around the globe."

Special trophies which did not come with any prize money were also won by Markus Moufang (43, Nidda Ober-Schmitten) as the winner of the "HJS Diesel Masters" and ski star Kristian Ghedina as the fastest man on snow and asphalt.