Tsutomu Tojo, one of the most respected and accomplished racing engineers in Japan, has announced that he will be leaving TOM’s Racing after thirty years with the organisation, effective 31 December – and will be joining Toyota stablemates ROOKIE Racing at the start of the new year.
Tojo, 57, joined TOM’s in 1992 after graduating from the Nippon Automobile Maintenance College (now Toyota Technical College Tokyo) and working as a dealership mechanic for Toyota. Within two years, he became an engineer for Masanori Sekiya in the Japanese Touring Car Championship, contributing to championships in 1994 and 1998.
From there, Tojo became the lead engineer of TOM’s flagship number 36 car in the JGTC/Super GT Series, winning the GT500 Teams’ Championship in 1999. He helped navigate Juichi Wakisaka and André Lotterer to the GT500 Drivers’ Championship in 2006 and in 2009, along with the Teams’ Championship in 2006, 2008, and 2009. He was Lotterer’s race engineer in Super Formula when he won the 2011 series title, as well.
Beginning in 2020, Tojo was promoted to a chief engineer role overseeing both the number 36 and 37 teams in Super GT. TGR Team au TOM’s, and drivers Yuhi Sekiguchi and Sho Tsuboi, won the 2021 GT500 Drivers’ and Teams’ Championships – in what would turn out to be his final race with the team.
In a post from his personal blog, Tojo wrote: “I would like to thank all of TOM’s fans for their support over the years. I would like to thank all of you for your warm acceptance, both when we won, and when we lost. I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“From 1 January 2022, I will join ROOKIE Racing,” Tojo said.
“In order to create better cars with motorsports as a starting point, and to bring the appeal of motorsports to every corner of the earth, we will do our small part to strengthen the foundation of ROOKIE Racing.”
“Together with our new colleagues, we will build an efficient system to pass on our world-class racing skills. I don’t have the time to spend 15 or 20 years on this, as I have done in the past. I’m old and I’m going to die soon. So we would like to build it in five to seven years if possible, while I am still very healthy.”
“At some point, the race had become a struggle,” Tojo admitted. “I could feel the feeling fading, like a pump bursting whether I won or lost. But then, I saw Tsuboi’s driving in the season opener. It was so vivid, that I felt the feeling of being able to catch another car had returned.”
He then described the emotion of winning the GT500 title again at Fuji, how the late Haruo Tsuchiya inspired him to continue in the sport, and to be welcomed into ROOKIE Racing, the team established by Toyota president Akio “Morizo” Toyoda.
“To be crowned champion in the last race, to see the tears shining through the smiles of my friends, to share that moment with my fans… I felt Tsuchiya-san pushing me to continue racing, and Morizo-san accepted me.”
Tojo’s role within ROOKIE Racing has yet to be determined at this time, but he has already spent time with the team during the Super Formula winter test at Suzuka in December.
The team will compete in Super GT with the #14 Eneos X Prime GR Supra of Kazuya Oshima and Kenta Yamashita, and with a single-car Super Formula team with Oshima as their driver. They will also field two innovative cars in the Super Taikyu Series – a hydrogen engine Corolla Sport, and a biofuel-powered GR86.
Images courtesy of Toyota and the GT Association (GTA)
