The sportscar world has lost two teams within just a few days.
The German outfit Project 1, and Danish team GMB Motorsport has had to stop their activities.
Project 1, who previously was known as Tolomit, has chosen to close their doors, since they no longer can find the budget to run their programmes. They have been synonymous with Porsche for many years, and has participated in several Carrera Cup championships, including winning the German championship with Rene Rast, Philipp Eng and Christian Menzel. Eng would go on to win the Porsche Mobil 1 SuperCup title in 2015 in too.
They entered the FIA World Endurance Championship 2018, where they instantly became champions with Jörg Bergmeister, Egidio Perfetti, and Patrick Lindsey. That really boosted their confidence, so they would go on with the FIA WEC – but without major success. A bit blow was the start of the 2021 season, where they lost 2 cars within 30 minutes at the Prologue, since the cars were totalled, at different parts of the circuit. That resulted in the team’s second car only entering the championship later in the year, with the results also lacking for the actual full season car.
Photo: JJ Media
They took a win at the 2022 season finale with Mikkel Overgaard Pedersen, Matteo Cairoli, and Nicolas Leutwiler, but apart from that, it was tough season.
The 2023 was in partnership with AO Racing, where they ran both Rexy and Roxy liveries.
After a lot of years with Porsche, there was some BMW flirting being added in, including an Asian Le Mans Series 2023/24 participation with a M4 GT3, with two cars.
But now it’s sadly come to an end for the ambitious team.
Ambitious can definitely be attributed to GMB Motorsport too.
The team was founded ahead of the 2022 season, with not only big goals in Danish Motorsport but also internationally in the Michelin Le Mans Cup, with no less than three Honda NSX GT3 in the red, white, and black colors.
They instantly had sucuess – winning the TCR Denmark and Yokohama SuperCup championship in Denmark, along with the GT3 title in Michelin Le Mans Cup, and a subsequent auto-invite for the 2023 24 Hours of Le Mans.
So the team had to go an invest in an Aston Martin Vantage GT3 for the 2023 season in the European Le Mans Series, and two cars in the Michelin Le Mans Cup. That was a tough year, but the team was hit by a lot of bad luck. The ELMS season opener lasted 700 meters, until they were innocently involved in a multi-car pileup – with a hefty repair bill.
The unluck continued with the second round of ELMS at Imola being cancelled, so the second ever race in the Vantage would be at Le Mans. The race lasted a couple of hours, until they ended up in another multi-car pileup. DNF, and another big repair bill.
Photo: JJ Media
The third round at Motorland Aragon did go better, while the fourth round at Spa Francorchamps ended with another crashed car. The double finale at Portimao in Portugal gave the team the best result of the year, with a 5th place finish.
Another TCR Denmark title was won by Kasper H. Jensen, making him a 7-time Danish Champion.
The plans for 2024 was plenty of Danish racing in three different series, in addition to a GT World Challenge Europe programme in a new Aston Martin Vantage GT3 car. The plans during summer time 2023 were big, with participation in the FIA WEC 2024 in GT3, with a Hypercar programme in the subsiquent seasons.
Those plans has to be scrapped, with the GMB mother company presenting a strongly negative result, and it wouldn’t be OK to keep racing, when 400 people had been laid off in another part of the GMB company.
The future for GMB Motorsport is a bit uncertain. The activities has been sold to Christian Jensen and Ulrik Larsen. Jensen has been racing some historic racing in GMB colors, but was a multi time Danish Champion in Rally, plus his son Magnus, has been racing for GMB Motorsport in the past few seasons.. Larsen is also a racing driver, but has been racing under a different teamname, and never been involved in GMB Motorsport until now.
We wish all the best to both teams, and everybody involved in these tough decisions, who are looking for a new job.
