Toyota man Marquardt to replace Theissen at BMW

Jens Marquardt is to leave his role at Toyota to replace Mario Theissen as head of BMW Motorsport.

Marquardt was the team manager of the Toyota F1 team before in effect taking over the day-to-day running of the Toyota Motorsport facility as General Manager Business Development, Operations and Production. He was in charge as it looked for new opportunities and attempted to sell its engineering services.

It was thus with Marquardt that Colin Kolles and the Hispania team were dealing with regard to using Toyota chassis technology next year, until the deal apparently collapsed.

Marquardt arrives at BMW in time to kick start the company’s plans to return to the DTM in 2012. He will initially work alongside Theissen for the first six months of next year.

Theissen, who has worked at BMW for 33 years, has been the company’s motor sport boss since April 1999, when the company was gearing up to enter F1.

A statement from Toyota said: “Toyota Motorsport GmbH (TMG) confirms the departure of Jens Marquardt and wishes to place on record its sincere thanks for his significant contribution to the company over the past 10 years.”

TMG President Yoshiaki Kinoshita, who remains officially in charge of Cologne, added: “While we are naturally sad to lose Jens, we can understand why this was an opportunity he felt he had to take and we wish him the very best for his future.

“As well as his valued contribution to our Formula 1 project from beginning to end, Jens has played a key role in TMG’s emergence as a leading provider of high-performance engineering services and we are very grateful for his efforts.

“TMG has been aware of Jens’ decision for some time. We are taking steps to strengthen our structure and ensure we can build on a very positive first year for TMG as a service supplier.”