Toyota Confirms Full-Season Lineup; Adds Conway

Toyota Racing has confirmed its FIA World Endurance Championship lineup for 2015, as the Japanese manufacturer seeks to defend its World Championships achieved in 2014.

The lineup was presented at a Toyota press conference in Tokyo. The manufacturer also confirmed a 2017 return to the FIA World Rally Championship with the Toyota Yaris at the press conference.

World Champion drivers Sebastien Buemi and Anthony Davidson will have Kazuki Nakajima joining them in the former No. 8, now renumbered No. 1 Toyota TS040 Hybrid for the full season.

Nakajima moves over from what had been the No. 7 car. In his place, Mike Conway has been officially confirmed in the sister No. 2 alongside Alexander Wurz and Stephane Sarrazin.

Conway replaces Nicolas Lapierre of the six full-time drivers after making a handful of starts in 2014. He raced a full-season of LMP2 with G-Drive Racing in 2013.

Drivers of the No. 1 car were present at the press conference, while the other three were not due to their testing program.

Toyota expects to confirm its new test and development driver in the next few weeks.

“Based on our experiences in 2014, we have decided to modify the line-ups for each car and we believe this will give us the optimum overall performance as the individual driving styles are now well matched,” said team president Yoshiaki Kinoshita.

“All our drivers are WEC race winners and we are confident they will add to their tally this season and in the future.”

The Toyota confirmations are the last from the three LMP1 factory manufacturers of 2014, following Audi and Porsche, to be confirmed.

Nissan should roll out its driver announcements over the next month or so, with the LMP1 privateers, Rebellion and ByKolles, also possible to make some announcements of their own within a similar time frame.