Toyota Gazoo Racing has announced their 9 drivers for FIA WEC and Le Mans.
Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, and Jose Maria Lopez will drive car number 7, while Sebastien Buemi, Anthony Davidson, and Kazuki Nakajima will pilot car number 9. These two cars are full season FIA WEC entrants.
For the 6 hours of Spa Francorchamps in early May and and Le Mans in June, there will be a third Toyota, with Stephane Sarrazin, Nicolas Lapierre, and Yuji Kunimoto behind the wheel.
Photo: JJ Media
Sarrazin has been at Toyota for many seasons, but this year he will focus more on his Formula E programme. That’s why he is in the third car this year. Lapierre was a Toyota drivers for a few seasons when the programme started. After racing in LMP2, which he by the way also does this year in every other WEC round, he is back at the Japanese car manufacturer.
Kunimoto is a new name in the international sportscar world. He has a lot of experience in Japan, where he has won the Japanese Formula 3 Championship in 2010 and the Super Formula Championship (formerly known as Formula Nippon) in 2016. But he has also raced in a parallel Super GT programme since 2009, where he has claimed several victories. So it will be very interesting to follow the 26 year-old Japanese driver.
Toyota Gazoo Racing will present their 2017 version of the TS050 Hybrid car later this week.
