It was three years ago at Mobility Resort Motegi where Ritomo Miyata won the Autobacs SUPER GT Series GT500 championship and signed off from Japanese competition to begin an arduous three-year excursion in Europe.
Today, CarGuy MKS Racing has announced that the 27-year-old Toyota works driver will return to SUPER GT and drive the team’s #7 Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo in Motegi, site of the double-header finale to the 2026 season. Miyata, who scored his long-awaited first FIA Formula 2 Championship race victory in the inaugural event at the Madrid hybrid street circuit, will race alongside Toyota Gazoo Racing Driver Challenge (TGR-DC) prospect Kiyoshi Umegaki.
Miyata replaces Zak O’Sullivan, who was already due to miss the final races of the Super Formula Championship due to his new commitments to Envision Racing in the FIA Formula E Championship – and will now exit Japan a month early to prepare for his debut season in FE.
Though he spent four years racing for Toyota in the GT500 class, Miyata also raced for Kessel Racing and CarGuy Racing in the 2023 FIA WEC 6 Hours of Fuji, where he finished third in LMGTE Am on debut alongside CarGuy owner/driver Takeshi Kimura and Scott Huffaker.
As part of his “WEC Challenge Programme” for Toyota, Miyata also competed for most of the 2024 European Le Mans Series and that year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans for COOL Racing (now CLX Motorsport), bookending the ELMS campaign with wins at Barcelona and Portimão, along with a Rolex 24 At Daytona cameo for Vasser Sullivan Racing.
But apart from the Madring victory, Miyata’s three years in F2 have been a difficult slog, and the 2023 Japanese “Double Champion” has fallen out of the frame for either an F1 promotion or a coveted seat in the Toyota Racing WEC team – but with the end of the 2026 season looming, Miyata is expected to return to Japan with Toyota in 2027.
Meanwhile, with O’Sullivan now out of the frame, 18-year-old series rookie Umegaki has a slim chance to make history at the Motegi Grand Final on 7/8 November.
Umegaki is currently third in the GT300 Drivers’ standings, 20 points behind championship leaders João Paulo de Oliveira and Iori Kimura. A win in either race would make Umegaki the youngest race winner in SUPER GT history, and if he is able to overturn the 20-point deficit in the final two rounds, he would become SUPER GT’s youngest champion in either class.
Images © Toyota, dailysportscar.com
