Kazuki Nakajima, one of the founding members of Toyota’s FIA WEC team, will stand down from the WEC team after this week’s 8 Hours of Bahrain.
Kazuki, now 36, won the Le Mans 24 Hours three times, and earned the 2018-2019 World Championship alongside Sébastien Buemi and Fernando Alonso in his time with the Japanese factory team.
That time has yielded a total of 16 overall WEC race wins and a further 19 podium finishes from 58 starts. Nakajima is one of only two drivers to have raced every iteration of Toyota’s WEC top class timeline with the TS030, TS040, TS050 and now the GR010.
Kazuki earned the team’s first hybrid pole position at Le Mans in 2014 before the disappointment of a technical issue whilst leading comfortably and famously he was at the wheel too in 2016 when the #5 TS050 HYBRID suffered heart-breaking failure on the penultimate lap.
Much happier days were to come at Le Mans though, Kazuki was in the cockpit to take the chequered flag and celebrate victory in 2018, 2019 and 2020 for a remarkable hat-trick of wins.
Kazuki Nakajima: “It has been an honour to compete for TOYOTA GAZOO Racing for nine seasons and I feel so lucky to have won races, championships and Le Mans 24 Hours alongside so many talented, passionate and dedicated colleagues.
“I want to express my greatest thanks to TOYOTA GAZOO Racing for this 10-year journey in WEC. I have so many memories with this team, who have been a family to me in tough times as well as in happy times, and I will always feel like a TOYOTA GAZOO Racing team member.
“A new era is coming for endurance racing, with many Hypercar manufacturers joining in the next years, and it will be a new era for me. I will continue to support the team and I look forward to watching the start of a new, exciting time for endurance racing.”
Toyota’s 2022 driver line-up is set to be confirmed “in the coming weeks”, with Development driver Ryo Hirakawa the hot tip to step up to a full-season drive.
