Craft Racing and Bamboo Engineering will merge together ahead of the 2014 season to form Craft-Bamboo Racing.
Craft Racing, who have been dominating the Asian GT scene in the last few years, have previously ran in GT Asia, the Malaysian Super Series, Dubai 24 Hours and the Asian Le Mans series, which, for this year, has gained the team an invitational entry into the 24 Hours of Le Mans, after finishing second in the GTC standings in 2013.
Bamboo, meanwhile, come from a completely different background, with the team last season running Alex MacDowall and James Nash in the World Touring Car Championship, with Nash winning the Independents class of the series.
Bamboo have also had teams in GP3 and the British Touring Car Championship, and this season become partners of Aston Martin Racing in the World Endurance Championship.
The new team, who will have offices in the United Kingdom, Malaysia and Hong Kong, will run cars in both Europe and Asia this season, and will be led by former Bamboo chief Richard Coleman.
“We decided to draw upon the extensive experience of both teams and bring it all together under one roof,” explains Coleman. “Bamboo Engineering and Craft Racing have had a good relationship for a number of years now and share the same goals – we both want to run world championship-winning teams.”
Talking about the reasons why Bamboo wanted to merge with Craft, Coleman said: “Despite our success in WTCC, we made the decision to move into GT racing for the 2014 season. Of course, we are still involved in touring car projects and would hope to see a return to the WTCC at some point but, for this season, Craft-Bamboo Racing is focusing its efforts on the FIA World Endurance Championship.”
Talking about Craft’s reasoning, Frank Yu said: “In just a few years we have made a big impact in sportscar racing in Asia. We wanted to take this to the next level and become a world-wide team competing for world-titles. Joining forces with Bamboo Engineering, which has experience at racing at the top-level, will jump start our team to take the next step and bridge platforms across the continents.”
Craft-Bamboo’s program for 2014 will be the FIA WEC in the No.99 Aston Martin, the GT Asia Series with two Aston Martin Vantage GT3s, which will also race at the 2014 12 Hours of Sepang, and an Oak Morgan-Judd LMP2 and two Ligier CN Prototypes in the Asian Le Mans Series.
The team will make their début at the opening round of the WEC at Silverstone on April 20.
