BMW Team Studie Poised for GTWC Asia Switch

Photo: Team Studie

Team Studie appears all but certain to withdraw from SUPER GT, with the BMW outfit looking set to return to GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS competition this year instead with a newly-upgraded M4 GT3 EVO.

BMW’s sole customer team has been a continuous presence on the GT300 grid since 2020, and has run the M4 GT3 for the past three seasons.

Team owner Yasuaki ‘Bob’ Suzuki revealed plans to Sportscar365 last December to upgrade its M4 to the latest EVO specification, but the team skipped last week’s GT300 test at Fuji Speedway and no official word on its 2025 program has been forthcoming.

However, the team undertook a shakedown of an M4 GT3 EVO at Fuji on Monday intended for use in GT Asia with long-time Studie driver Seiji Ara at the wheel.

That followed Suzuki posting on his personal blog last Friday that Studie is preparing to contest the GT Asia opener at Sepang, which falls on the same weekend as the Okayama SUPER GT curtain-raiser.

Studie is believed to have been weighing up a switch from Michelin to Dunlop tires for 2025, but Dunlop is understood to be supplying six GT300 cars for the new season, including new customer team PONOS Racing, while Michelin has confirmed it will supply just two cars, the No. 20 Shade Racing and No. 30 apr Toyota GR86 GTs.

Sportscar365 has contacted Suzuki for further clarification on the team’s 2025 plans.

Studie was last absent from the SUPER GT grid in 2019, the second year of a two-year hiatus during which time it contested GT Asia with GT4 machinery.

It returned running Ara and Tomohide Yamaguchi as a Pro-Am combination for two seasons before switching from the M6 to the new M4 GT3, with Augusto Farfus driving for the team in 2022 and Bruno Spengler coming on board in 2023.

Ara and new teammate Niklas Kruetten finished fifth in last year’s standings, with rookie Kruetten expressing enthusiasm about returning for a second season with the team.

Studie previously contested SUPER GT and GT Asia in parallel in 2022-23, albeit only contesting the Japan-based rounds of the latter series.