JMW Motorsport, in the wake of non-selection for the 2026 European Le Mans Series, is working hard and closing in on a programme to be on track elsewhere for 2026, with GT World Challenge Europe’s Endurance Cup looking like the primary focus of its current commercial efforts.
On the face of it, the omission of JMW Motorsport’s Ferrari LMGT3 from the 2026 European Le Mans Series is just another tale of too many cars looking for too few available entries, and, after a couple of lean years on the points-scoring front, there are clear reasons for the choice.
But JMW is not just any other entry. Jim McWhirter’s JMW Motorsport has been part of the European Le Mans Series since the ELMS emerged in 2012, as the FIA WEC was born from the Le Mans Series and short-lived Intercontinental Le Mans Cup.
Indeed, JMW, and Jim’s cars with assistance from Virgo Motorsport, scored Championship wins in 2007, 2008, 2012 and 2017, and a Le Mans class win in 2017 in LMGTE Am (pictured above).
2024 saw the team’s 14th Le Mans appearance, with only a single non-appearance through non-selection back in 2016, until 2025 again saw its entry rejected by the selection panel.
All told, that’s 76 consecutive ELMS races from the start of the current Series in 2012 (put alternatively, that’s all of the races!). Add to that there were 15 consecutive LMS appearances in the three seasons before the ELMS was established, Oh and 15 more with Jim’s cars being run under the Virgo Motorsports banner for the preceding three seasons too.
Over the years JMW has fielded Ferraris 430 GTC, 458 GTE (the last team to field the fan favourite (and it won its last race with the team at Monza in 2017)), 488 GTE and 296 GT3 (the team owner still owns all of them), plus a short-lived and unhappy period with an Aston Martin Vantage GT2, Jim let that one go, it currently races in post-historic competition.
It’s a particularly tough pill to swallow too because, in contrast to hundreds of other planned programmes that lack that one final ingredient, budget, contracts were signed by the end of the 2025 ELMS season for the team to return with an unchanged driver line-up. Gianmaria Bruni, Jason Hart, Scott Noble and the team had invested in a brand new Ferrari 296 GT3 for the 2026 season too, with the Evo kit due for delivery post-Christmas and the 2024/2025 ELMS car up for sale.
Add to those dramas a real (but for these purposes private) tragedy for the close-knit team in the days leading up to the ELMS entry disappointment, and the lead-up to Christmas has been anything but happy for the crew. On that front, we’ll simply say that our thoughts are with everybody affected.
It’s in part for that reason that you won’t see a personal comment in this story from anyone directly involved, in part they are busy in recovery and in another part there is genuine grief involved.
So what next? First things first, it is NOT the end for the team.
JMW is understood to have looked at a range of other alternative programmes, but make no mistake, this is very, VERY late to be starting that process.
GT World Challenge Europe’s Endurance Cup is the likely principal target, offering as it does a platform at a level appropriate to such an experienced team. Work is progressing apace, and JMW hopes to be in a position to confirm its detailed plans in days and weeks rather than weeks and months.
Moving on, though, this moment gives another reason to make a wider point, and it’s a point we are making editorially, not because we have been prompted by the JMW team in any way.
With so many series and championships at the highest levels full to bursting, isn’t it time to take another look at two aspects of our sport?
The timing of these decisions and the options that can be offered.
And that’s not just a point aimed at race organisers, it goes further. The effective starting gun for finalising any endurance racing programmes in the privateer arena is the publication of the Driver rankings for the subsequent year by the FIA. That comes in October/ November and with budgets well into seven figures of any major currency for a season that’s increasingly looking very, very late to the party.
Could, and should, that process be shuffled earlier to better align with the commercial calendar, which sees most major marketing budgets settled in the summer months, and could that open the door to earlier decisions on entries for the following seasons?
As for options for the shape of the sport in the near future, there are, on the face of it, some reasonably simple changes that could be made to well-established structures that could help to accommodate more teams at a truly competitive level in the sport.
For now, though, we’ll keep our powder dry on that subject. It’s part of a significant storyline we’ll be developing in 2026.
To JMW Motorsport, the owners, managers, permanent staff and their loyal band of weekend warriors. Good luck with what comes next.