After retiring from competition in the original DTM in 1993, Olaf Manthey worked briefly with Persson Motorsport before establishing Olaf Manthey Racing in Rheinbreitbach in 1996, following the collapse of the Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft. The team relocated to Meuspath on 1 April 2000. In December 2013, Raeder Motorsport was merged into Manthey Racing at the same time Porsche took its majority stake. Brothers Nicolas and Martin Raeder, founders of Raeder Motorsport, assumed management roles with a combined 40% stake, while Olaf Manthey retained a 9% minority share. Porsche's acquisition was prompted in part by personal circumstances: Olaf Manthey's son had died in a car accident in 2007, and his daughter had no interest in inheriting the team. Manthey became a certified Porsche partner in 2021. Since 2023, the team has run a collaborative arrangement with Australian outfit EMA Motorsport across several events.
The team's motorsport debut came in the 1996 Porsche Supercup, where they finished fourth in the teams' standings. Between 1997 and 2000, Manthey and Dutch driver Patrick Huisman won four consecutive drivers' and teams' championships in the Supercup — Huisman's four titles remain the most by any driver in the series' history.
The Nürburgring has been the centrepiece of Manthey Racing's identity. The team made its first competitive appearance at the circuit in 1998 and has entered the 24 Hours of Nürburgring annually since 2006, with 2012 the sole absence when Olaf Manthey chose to compete in the International GT Open instead. Manthey holds a record-setting seven overall victories at the event.
Their debut win came in 2006 with Lucas Luhr, Timo Bernhard, Mike Rockenfeller, and Marcel Tiemann at the wheel of a 996-generation 911 GT3, a race that also set a new overall distance record of 3,832 kilometres in 151 laps. Three further victories followed in 2007, 2008, and 2009 with the same driver quartet. After a seventh triumph in 2021, which was secured after only nine hours of racing, the team took pole and crossed the line first in 2025 but received a 100-second penalty following a collision involving one of their drivers, dropping them to second overall.
Manthey made its Le Mans debut as a privateer at the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans with a Porsche 996 GT3 R, winning on their first attempt in the LMGT class with Huisman, Uwe Alzen, and Luca Riccitelli.
From 2013 onward, Manthey supported Porsche's factory WEC programme. In their first shared season they scored a 1–2 victory at Le Mans in the LM GTE Pro class, and by 2015 had secured the FIA Endurance Trophy for LMGTE Pro teams, with Richard Lietz also winning the World Endurance Cup for GT Drivers that year.
When the WEC transitioned to the LMGT3 category ahead of 2024, Manthey was again selected to operate Porsche's factory entries. Running cars in partnership with EMA Motorsport and PureRxcing, both the #91 and #92 Porsche 911 GT3 Rs took class wins at the 2024 24 Hours of Le Mans. The #92 clinched the LMGT3 drivers' and teams' championships at the 2024 6 Hours of Fuji, with the #91 securing a 1–2 in the teams' standings at Bahrain. In 2025, Manthey earned back-to-back Le Mans class wins and championships with the #92 crew.
Manthey competed in German touring car racing with Mercedes-Benz machinery in 2001 and 2002, achieving a best of third in the DTM teams' standings. After a gap of more than two decades, the team returned to DTM in 2023, winning both the drivers' championship — with Thomas Preining as champion — and the teams' title in their first season back. Following a difficult 2024, they repeated the double in 2025 with Ayhancan Güven as drivers' champion.
Manthey entered the Bathurst 12 Hour for the first time in 2023, finishing second overall by less than a second. On their second attempt, in 2024, they won outright with Matt Campbell, Ayhancan Güven, and Laurens Vanthoor in the #912 car. The team also won the 2024–25 Asian Le Mans Series GT class championship, earning an invitation to the 2025 24 Hours of Le Mans with a third entry that wore the livery of the fictional Chip Hart Racing team from the Brad Pitt F1 film. In 2026, Manthey began a campaign in the IMSA SportsCar Championship.
Alongside its racing operations, Manthey runs a performance tuning division specialising in Porsche road cars, particularly the 911 and Cayman. Products carry an 'MR' suffix denoting Manthey Racing origin and are often developed in cooperation with Porsche, earning OEM-approved status. In 2021, Porsche development driver Lars Kern set a Nürburgring Nordschleife production car lap record of 6:43.300 in a 911 GT2 RS equipped with a Manthey Performance Kit — a record held for three years until surpassed by Mercedes-AMG in 2024.