BMW Team Studie Set to End Race Activities After 18 Years

Long-time BMW SUPER GT and GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS outfit Team Studie is set to end its racing activities after 18 years.

Team owner Yasuaki ‘Bob’ Suzuki has revealed that last weekend’s Suzuka 1000km is highly likely to have marked the final chapter in a story dating back to 2008, when his specialist BMW tuning company first entered SUPER GT’s GT300 class.

The BMW M4 GT3 EVO shared by Seiji Ara, Tomohide Yamaguchi and Kizuku Hirota, finished 14th overall and fifth in the Bronze class, two laps down on the class-winning Team WRT BMW, taking top honors in the classification for GTWC Asia teams.

On the day following the Intercontinental GT Challenge fixture, Suzuki wrote on his personal blog: “This result brings an end to our racing activities for this season.

“At present, we are not engaged in any discussions at all about racing next season and beyond, so we plan to end our racing activities that began in 2008.

“Actually, over the course of these 18 years, I had decided to stop racing a couple of times, but each time I have received proposals from either [BMW’s] home country or from within Japan to take on new challenges.

“There have been times I’ve gone back on a decision to withdraw. They say that things that happen twice will happen a third time, but they also say third time’s the charm.

“Personally, I really feel this is the end this time.

“We were not involved in racing at all for the first 13 years after the company was founded in 1995, until 2008, so I plan to return to that position now.”

Suzuki declined to make further comment when contacted by Sportscar365.

Studie first participated in SUPER GT’s GT300 class in 2008 with a BMW Z4 entered in collaboration with parts manufacturer Glad Japan, introducing the popular blue-haired ‘Hatsune Miku’ vocaloid character to the Japanese series for the first time.

It entered into an alliance with Goodsmile Racing in 2011, winning the title that next year under the ‘GSR & Studie with TeamUKYO’ banner with Nobuteru Taniguchi and Taku Bamba at the wheel of a Z4 GT3, an alliance that continued until 2013.

Studie then struck out on its own with increased works support from BMW in 2014, and continued to race in GT300 until the end of 2017, after which it switched to what was then known as the Blancpain GT Asia Series with a two-car GT4 entry.

The team returned to SUPER GT in 2020 with a Pro-Am BMW effort while transferring its GT4 project to Super Taikyu, before returning to all-Pro efforts for 2022-24, with works drivers Augusto Farfus and Bruno Spengler joining the team during this period.

Studie has raced solely in GTWC Asia at the start of last year, abandoning its SUPER GT project due to financial issues, and entered into a tie-up with Schubert Motorsport this year in a bid to boost its competitiveness after a disappointing 2025.

The team, which has scored a best overall finish of seventh in this year’s Okayama round and third in Pro-Am, initially planned a full GTWC Asia campaign but will not be present for the remaining rounds of the season in Beijing and Shanghai.

It is possible that the entity running the No. 5 BMW, G Force Engineering, could continue to operate the car next year under the PLUS banner without Studie involvement.