Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Jenzer Motorsport will leave FIA Formula 3 after this month’s season finale, having decided against applying for entry into the 2025 to 2027 seasons.
Team co-owner Andreas Jenzer told Formula Scout about the decision, and reassured his Central European Zone and Italian Formula 4 squads “will 100% continue”.
“[Wife] Esther and myself are getting towards retirement age. We’ve been in GP3 since day one in 2010 and we really enjoyed [its successor] F3 also because it’s always a pleasure to work with such a high-level organisation. But one day you have to start to go towards a second life, maybe a little bit calmer life.”
Having run the company “flatout for 31 years, I think we both deserve to settle down a little bit and to scale down”, Jenzer reasoned. “We’ve missed out a lot of private things. We love to travel, and we want to go also visit motorsport a bit.”
“Some of my F3 people will stay with Jenzer Motorsport because some of them are also approaching retirement age,” he added.
“I’m placing quite a few of my people in Formula 1, and some will probably move to Formula 2, but there is nothing strange happening in the company. We will push very hard for F4 [still] to build up some good future racing drivers.”
He has not yet had time for emotion, but admits he is not one for tears or celebrations.
“It will hurt, but I don’t know when I’ll start to feel it,” Jenzer confessed. “I’m looking forward to Monza and to the end-of-season testing that we will run for the new team.”
GP3 launched in 2010 on F1’s support bill and Jenzer’s Pal Varhaug won the inaugural race. The team is one of two that has contested every GP3/FIA F3 race. The paddock expects F2 frontrunner DAMS will join F3 in 2025.
Photo: Jenzer Motorsport
“One of the nicest memories still for me is the [2010 and ’11] seasons with Nico Muller, because at this stage I was still engineering the car, I was very close with the mechanic and the team, because engineering a car is always a pleasure, [particularly for] Nico who today is a professional racing driver.”
Running Yuki Tsunoda in 2019, FIA F3’s first season, also stands out: “[He] came as a not even 50kg little boy from Japanese F4. I think none of the top teams wanted him to race because he was a complete novice and then, within two years, he made it into F1.
“But every season has something great. GP3 went through a rollercoaster like other categories, but it stayed the strongest category out there and I think today [F3] is already established category and, with F2, has a nice place.”
Jenzer runs an old GP2 car in BOSS GP part-time, and added with a smile: “If I would be 10 years younger, I would run an F3 and an F2 team…”
For him “it would be nice” to bow out “in Monza with a win”, noting “Monza is always a big challenge in qualifying because of the slipstreaming and then anything can happen”.