The Legends Parade, which brings together ex-racers and their original machinery, has proved a highlight of the Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring since the race returned in 2014. This year, the Legends Parade on July 1-3 features cars and drivers from BMW M1 Procar, a short-lived series held in 1979-80 that pitted the best drivers of the day against each other in identical BMW M1 cars.

Read our 2015 Austrian Grand Prix trip report, which includes pictures from last year’s Legends Parade.

The Procar series was the brainchild of Jochen Neerpasch, the head of BMW’s Motorsports division, who was in the charge of developing the M1, BMW’s first super car. Now widely recognized as one of the finest BMW’s ever built, the M1 was designed in Italy and made for BMW by Lamborghini. It was first unveiled at the 1978 Paris Motor Show. In order for the car to compete in Group 5 racing, BMW needed to produce 400 ‘road going’ versions of the car. However, production was beset by delays and with its Group 5 racing debut put back, Neerpasch came up with the idea of a one-make racing series for the M1 in 1979.

The first series of Procar featured eight rounds, all of which took place on Formula 1 weekends and featured the best Formula 1 drivers of the era. A factory BMW team fielded five cars in each race and awarded driving slots based on times set in Formula 1 practice to Mario Andretti, Emerson Fittipaldi, James Hunt, Alan Jones, Jacques Laffite, Niki Lauda and Nelson Piquet, among others. Other teams competed (including Tom Walkinshaw racing and other touring car teams), as did several non-F1 drivers. With three wins, Niki Lauda took out the inaugural championship by a small margin from Hans-Joachim Stuck who won twice.