Nakajima “Never Imagined” Toyota Hitting 100 Races

Kazuki Nakajima says he “never, ever imagined” that Toyota’s top-class prototype program in the FIA World Endurance Championship would be so long-lived and successful when it first began in 2012, as the manufacturer now prepares to make its 100th series start.

Nakajima was among the driving roster for the TS030 Hybrid’s first race at the 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans, alongside Nicolas Lapierre and Alexander Wurz. He remained part of Toyota’s WEC lineup until the end of the 2021 campaign, when he retired from competing full-time and stepped into a vice president role at Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe.

Reflecting on Toyota’s 100 WEC races, which consists of all the championship’s contests with the exception of the first two 2012 rounds, Nakajima says he never expected a list of achievements that would include five Le Mans victories and seven WEC manufacturers’ titles to date.

“As a driver, when we started this program, I could’ve never, ever imagined that we would continue a program like this in such a way and for such a long time,” he said when asked about those early days by Sportscar365.

“In this sense, not only myself but everyone in the team has a big appreciation to all the support from Japan especially coming from Mr. Akio Toyoda who is basically pushing all the motorsport activity.

“We do understand we are very lucky to be in this situation where we can continue pushing like this.”

For all of the victories and success achieved during those 100 races, Nakajima picks out the 2016 Le Mans as a major turning point, when Toyota agonizingly missed out on a maiden victory after suffering a loss of power while leading on the final lap of the race.

“This moment was probably the most difficult moment throughout our 100 races but at the same time this was really like a turning point for us to not change our mentality but this race also gave us a certain amount of confidence we deserve to win Le Mans as a team,” Nakajima explained.

“Unfortunately, somehow it didn’t happen in the end but I think we did the job as a team that deserved to win Le Mans.

“This was a turning point. Ideally, if we were able to achieve this a year after, this would’ve been even better but this was another challenge and it took two years.

“I really feel like this was the moment that we got something in our hands. In this sense, this moment was a highlight for us.”

Toyota finally achieved that maiden La Sarthe victory two years later in 2018 with the TS050 Hybrid and Nakajima describes that year’s evolution of the LMP1 car as his favorite of the Toyota prototypes he raced.

“The 2018 car was probably the most complete car in LMP1,” he said. “The 2017 and 2016 cars were already good enough but at the same time we saw we were not quite there so the 2018 car was really the final step.

“The sensation of the LMP1 car was something special with the acceleration and the management we had.”