There have been rumours for a good while that SEAT and BMW will scale back their World Touring Car Championship commitments, and on Friday autosport.com put some meat on the bones.

We already knew that SEAT will drop the the ORECA-run half of their presence, and the question now is whether there will be a works entry next year at all. We should find out soon, but series organisers are confident.

Moving on to BMW, it looks like the team that runs Andy Priaulx’s car, the excellently named Racing Bart Mampaey (or RBM if you want to be boring) will run two cars. Following the departure of Alex Zanardi, ROAL Motorsport isn’t expected to continue, and neither is Schnitzer Motorsport.

It’s what Schnitzer Motorsport is going to do that caught my eye. They could be a works BMW team in the VLN series. That’s VLN, or ‘Veranstaltergemeinschaft Langstreckenpokal Nürburgring’ – yes, it’s German. Or ‘The Association of Nürburgring Endurance Cup Organisers’, in English, according to Wikipedia.

The actual series is the ‘BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring’, or ‘BFGoodrich Endurance Championship’, and takes place around the legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife. DTM would seem like a more logical – and higher profile – move for Schnitzer and BMW, but also doubtless far more expensive – which is probably the point.

Anyway, reading more of the Wikipedia entry, it’s sounds quite interesting – six-hour races with driver changes, as well as shorter races. But then it goes mental, and claims that the final race of the year is known as the ‘Schinkenrennen’, or ‘Ham Race’.

I know the Germans love a bit of meat produce, but that, I reasoned, had to be a case of mischievous Wikipedia editing. After all, there’s no mention of ham in the calendar on the official website.

But no, delving a bit deeper, the final race of the season really is called that, and the winners do indeed receive an “original Westphalian ham” as part of their prize.

The closest thing I can think of in the UK is meat bingo. Not quite the same, is it? I do love Germany.