Marques had an unremarkable F1 career which consisted of three separate stints for the Minardi team, neither of which lasted a full season. He did two races for the team at the start of 1996, 10 in the second half of 1997, replacing the Prost-bound Jarno Trulli, and 14 in 2001 as Fernando Alonso’s first F1 teammate before being replaced by Alex Yoong for the last three rounds. That year, Marques managed his career-best result with a pair of ninth places – not enough to score points back then, but enough to ensure he actually finished ahead of Alonso in the championship standings that year.
He continues to race now back his native Brazil, predominantly in touring car and endurance racing, as well as running a business specialising in custom cars and bikes. Now, he’s combined his racing and design activities to come up with this TMC prototype racer.
Yes, it looks like the sort of fantasy concept car that you might only see in Gran Turismo Sport and will never actually come to fruition. However, this incredible-looking machine actually exists.
The new Tarso Marques Concept prototype for the Brazilian Endurance Series🇧🇷 is something out of this world…😱
📸unknown pic.twitter.com/62FylDXntA
— Sergio Fonseca (@SergioFonseca8) May 6, 2020
Powered by a turbocharged V6 engine, the Batmobile-like racer has even been given an on-track shakedown ahead of its planned debut in the Brazilian Endurance Championship later this year.
Everything about it is seriously cool, particularly the matte black paint job. The only thing I’m not a fan of is that fact that this amazing-looking machine will seemingly be relegated to a relatively obscure national championship; I wanna see this racing at Le Mans.
It could even be driven by a crew of obscure 90s Brazilan F1 drivers – maybe Marques could team up with Ricardo Rosset and Pedro Diniz. Who wouldn’t want to see that!?
