Marko Jantscher

Marko Jantscher (born 21th January 1995 in Salzburg, Austria) is an Austrian race driver currently racing in AutoReject World Series for Nurminen Grand Prix Engineering, having finished as a runner-up in AutoReject 3.5 in 2017.

Early life

Marko was born in Salzburg to Florian, a director at a building aggregates company and Karina, a forensic scientist. The family moved to Düsseldorf when Jantscher was 12, where he first went karting. Discovering an innate talent, Jantscher entered a few championships in the west of Germany. Much to the anger of his rivals, the young Austrian dominated each championship he entered, bagging himself a drive in the ADAC Formel Masters championship.

Racing Career

ADAC Formel Masters and Formula 3

Jantscher managed to come 2nd in his first season of the ADAC Formel Masters series, which included wins in all three races at Oschersleben. He was picked up for German Formula 3, and this time came 3rd in the championship with 289 points.

2015: F3RWRS

Jantscher was announced alongside Leandro Moreira for the new Fusion Motorsports F3RWRS team. After a steady start, he had a run of five podiums in a row, culminating in a sprint race win at Donington. He won again in the sprint at the Norisring, and this run of good form alerted top teams like Jones Racing, Licor Beirão and Aston Martin. He signed a deal with Licor Beirão, but after the negotiations came to a close Jantscher endured some terrible luck. Having been hung out to dry at Ascari by his teammate Stefan Kuntz in the first Italy race, Nick Nurmester took him off in the second race. Suspension failure and electrical problems curtailed the hopes of more points at Fuji Speedway, taking the Austrian out of the title race. This hoodoo continued into the last race, where Daniel Melville made an overtaking manoeuvre on Jantscher at Surfers' Paradise. Unfortunatly, Jantscher had nowhere to go except the wall which capped off a disappointing end to an otherwise impressive year.

2016: F2RWRS

After some long negotiations, Jantscher was confirmed as a Licor Beirão driver for 2016 F2RWRS season, and will replace the F1RWRS-bound Alberto Cara. After a disappointing 2015, the Portuguese team dropped into pre-qualifying, and despite Jantscher's obvious pace he was held back by his team-mate João António Soares. Having failed to qualify for the first two races, Jantscher was approached by Prince Falik to switch teams having just fired Josh Carlisle. He accepted, and won first time out at Brands Hatch with Falik Arrows. This opened the floodgates for more points; Jantscher grabbed a fine 3rd at his home Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring and scored further points at the Norisring and Zandvoort. A lean spell came for Jantscher after; a lowly 9th at Monaco and a heavy shunt at Spa saw the Austrian pick up an injury which caused him to miss the race in Mexico.

Having returned to the field, Jantscher showed a tiny pang of race-rustiness as he instigated a collision with Alitalia's Dan Greenlaw. This saw Jantscher reach sufficient penalty points to receive a one race ban which would see him miss the race at Fuji Speedway and also count him out of the running for the F2RWRS title. He returned for the PDVSA Twin 100 rounds in Tropico, coming 2nd and 6th in order to claim an impressive 4th in the final standings.

2017: AutoReject 3.5

Jantscher signed a deal with Jones Racing to join their AutoReject 3.5 lineup for 2017 in place of Connor O'Heagan. It was implied that reigning champion Terry Hawkin would stay in the series to become the Austrian's team-mate, but the Brit returned to F2RWRS. Jones later signed Alessandro Marchesi to partner Jantscher, the Italian also moving across from F2RWRS. Marchesi outscored Jantscher in the first race, racking up a victory in the feature race, but that was the only competition the Austrian faced from his teammate all year.

After the Australian round, Jantscher put together a good sequence of results as he visited the podium on numerous occasions and won the feature races at Vallelunga and Oulton Park, taking poles and fastest laps in both. This rich run of form ended at Road Atlanta, where Jantscher made an unforced error at the top of the hill and ended his chances of scoring points that weekend; it was his only failure to qualify for a feature race. He picked himself up again for the following round at Zandvoort, scoring two second-places, and bagged another second his heat at the Lausitzring. This round proved to be a damp squib, as Jantscher's suspension failed on lap 31 of the feature race whilst in 3rd. He won his heat at Spa, taking 2nd in the feature and setting himself up for what promised to be a proper battle with championship rival Bastiaan van Nieuwenhuijzen.

The hopes of a full-on battle between both drivers died out in the heat, where van Nieuwenhuijzen found himself in the wall at 130R thanks to an errant Thomas Butler. Jantscher was level on points thanks to his heat-race pole, but couldn't finish the job in the feature race and handed the championship to van Nieuwenhuijzen on countback.

2018: F1RWRS

After his front-running exploits in AR3.5, Jantscher signed a deal with Nurminen Racing Engineering to partner Martin McFry at their F1RWRS team.

Results

F3RWRS

Year	Team	Chassis	Engine	1		2		3	4		5		6		7	8		9		10	DC	Pts
2015	Fusion Motorsports	Fusion FM-01	Audi F3-1	AUS R1 4	AUS R2 21	TUR R1 4	TUR R2 9	MON SP 3	USA R1 2	USA R2 3	GBR R1 2	GBR R2 1	GER R1 21	GER R2 1	SPA SP 5	ITA R1 37	ITA R2 18	JPN R1 Ret	JPN R2 34	SUR SP Ret	5th	69

F2RWRS

Year	Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	DC	Pts
2015	Aston Martin Motor Racing	TAS	RSA	TUR	MON	FRA	GBR	GER	BEL	AUT	ITA	NDS	SIN	JPN	USA	100 Ret		39th	0
2016	Licor Beirão Portugal Racing	AUS DNPQ	PAC DNPQ	GBR	ITA	AUT	TUR	USA	GER	NDS	MON	BEL	MEX	CHN	JPN	100	100	4th	39
	Falik Arrows	AUS	PAC	GBR 1	ITA Ret	AUT 3	TUR 16	USA Ret	GER 5	NDS 4	MON 9	BEL Ret	MEX INJ	CHN 6	JPN EX	100 2	100 6

AutoReject 3.5 Results

Year	Team	1		2		3		4		5		6		7		8		9		10		DC	Pts
2017	National Jones AutoReject Racing	AUS HEA 2	AUS FEA 11	FRA HEA 4	FRA FEA 4	AUT HEA 2	AUT FEA 2	ITA HEA 2	ITA FEA 1	GBR HEA 2	GBR FEA 1	USA HEA 21	USA FEA DNQ	NED HEA 2	NED FEA 2	GER HEA 2	GER FEA Ret	BEL HEA 1	BEL FEA 2	JPN HEA 9	JPN FEA 12	2nd	168

F1RWRS/ARWS

Year	Team	Chassis	Engine	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	DC	Pts
2016	Kamaha Motorsports	Kamaha KM-6B	Suzuki AF1-4	AUS	NSW	GBR	ITA	AUT	CAN	SUS	NUS Ret	GER	NDS	MON	BEL	MEX	ARG	CHN	JPN			46th	0
2018	Nurminen Grand Prix Engineering	NRE Type 02	Holden LSWS-18	AUS 5	NSW 12	ITA Ret	MAR 9	CAL 10	USA Ret	CAN 15	GBR Ret	AUT Ret	GER Ret	SCA 10	BEL Ret	MON Ret	SAF 7	BRA Ret	ARG EX	JPN Ret	MAC 5	18th	4
2019	BASF Nurminen Grand Prix	NRE Type 02 NRE Type 02B	BMW P92/19	AUS 6	NSW Ret	KIN Ret	ITA Ret	MAR Ret	CAN 5	500 Ret	GBR Ret	AUT Ret	GER 5	SCA Ret	BEL Ret	MON 9	RSA 6	BRA Ret	ARG Ret	JPN 6	CHN EX	14th	7