Marco Polo Motorsports has finally broken its silence on the team’s absence from the fourth & fifth races of the Pirelli GT4 America series at Sebring International Raceway. Despite starting 2025 on a high note by securing the first pole position of the season, heavy contact from a competitor on lap one marked the beginning of a series of issues and unrepresentative results. Team owner Jeff Elghanayan confirmed that the team withdrew its entry from Sebring in order to conduct an internal review of its program, with the focus on how to swing the momentum back in their favor.
During the team’s sabbatical from racing, both the size and level of competition in the GT4 America paddock have grown, resulting in championship campaigns that allow for little to no margin of error. The fierce competition and early setbacks highlighted the need for changes to help the team return to frontrunning form.
Consequently, Marco Polo Motorsports elected to skip the event at Sebring International Raceway and focused its efforts on rebuilding its GT4 America program from the ground up, which involved moving operations to the Midwest to streamline logistics. Despite the relocation being a huge undertaking of its own, another major effort was made to make changes to the technical and operational side of the program in order to unlock the potential of the car and drivers.
The team has made the decision to move the GT4 America program away from its longtime service provider, Muellerized…, and has begun consolidating its efforts with Chicago Performance and Tuning Co, as its new service provider in the Midwest, positioning the team for long-term success.
Team owner Jeff Elghanayan explained the sweeping changes, including clarifying the team’s continued relationship with Muellerized…. “First of all, we’d like to thank John and everyone at Muellerized… for their years of hard work, dedication, and service to Marco Polo Motorsports. John and his team have been a key part of the success we’ve had for many years, and we don’t want that overshadowed by the decision to move this program to Chicago Performance. Muellerized… is still a key part of the Marco Polo Motorsports family, and we’ll continue to enjoy success in our other programs, which will still be managed by John and his team. Our main goal in making this change is to allow all of our programs to grow into more success in the future.”
Al Uscinski, Chicago Performance and Tuning Co team owner/team principal, said that “The team is very excited to take on this program. We had a very short but successful foray into SRO at the 2023 [Indianapolis] 8 Hour running our KTM X-BOW GT2 in GT America. Walking away from that event after almost sweeping the weekend really left us hungry for more, so having the opportunity to jump in [Pirelli] GT4 America is amazing.”
Uscinski echoed Elghanayan’s thoughts on the efforts made in changing the program mid-way through the season. “It’s been a lot of work in getting up to speed with the car, preparing it for the [upcoming] tests and races. The car saw a lot of hard racing at Sonoma and COTA, plus COTA was an enduro too. That combined with normal service meant the car needed a lot of attention. So, the car plus all the prep for the trailers and pulling the two crews together have been major efforts. What it does show is the commitment from both Jeff [Elghanayan] and the team here at CPT. Everyone’s in with both feet and I know I speak for all of us when talking about how excited and eager we all are to get on track and start seeing results.”
When asked about the short-, and long-term goals for the program, Uscinski said that he thinks that “2025 is a write-off as far as the championships are concerned, [as] there’s not enough margin of error with the level of competition to have a couple of rough weekends, miss an event, and still be in the title fights. What it does give us is an opportunity to learn the car, and dial in everything for the future.”
It’s not all eggs in one basket for 2026, however. Uscinski continued on by saying that “We’re still hoping to see good results in 2025, and I think we’ll be able to make up ground quite quickly thanks to the incredible support we’ve already received from TRD. We’ve traditionally run with European OEMs over the years, and the level of support that we’ve received from TRD has been astounding, we can’t give them enough credit for how awesome it’s been working with them already. So, I think when you look at everything holistically for 2026, it’s not just a soft goal, but our target to secure the different titles for Nicolai, Mads, MPM, CPT, and Toyota.”