Green Brave Gets New Lineup Amid Toyota Reshuffle

Toyota has announced its GT300 roster for the 2024 SUPER GT season, headlined by a refreshed lineup at the title-winning Saitama Toyopet Green Brave squad.

Kohta Kawaai, who was one half of the pairing that took last year’s title alongside Hiroki Yoshida in the team’s No. 52 Toyota GR Supra GT, was notably absent from the announcement.

Instead, Yoshida will be partnered by Toyota junior driver Seita Nonaka for the new season, with the team now simply known as ‘Green Brave’.

Nonaka is making the move across from the Tsuchiya Engineering team, although he joined Saitama Toyopet as a registered third driver for the penultimate round of the 2023 campaign at Autopolis following Tsuchiya’s temporary withdrawal from the series.

It’s unclear at this stage whether Kawaai, who has been a fixture of the Saitama Toyopet lineup since 2020, has an alternative berth lined up for this year.

Tsuchiya is set to return to the grid with its rebuilt GR Supra, which was heavily damaged in a major fire in the fourth round of the 2023 season at Fuji.

Nonaka’s 2023 teammate Togo Suganami will be partnered by Takamitsu Matsui, who returns to Tsuchiya after being loaned out to Team Mach last year.

Elsewhere, apr has revised lineups for both of its GT300 entries, with Toyota junior pair Rikuto Kobayashi and Jin Nakamura both stepping up from Japanese Formula 4.

Kobayashi joins Hiroaki Nagai and Manabu Orido in the No. 30 Toyota GR86 GT, while Nakamura will partner Kazuto Kotaka and Yuki Nemoto in the hybrid-powered No. 31 Lexus LC500h GT.

Nakamura, who tested the LC500h at Motegi last year along with Kobayashi, effectively replaces long-time apr driver Koki Saga in the lineup for the No. 31 car.

The remaining Toyota teams – Inging, Shade Racing, Anest Iwata Racing, LM Corsa and K-tunes Racing – all have mostly identical driver lineups to last year.

However, one other significant change is that Shade’s GR86 GT is switching to Michelin tires after two seasons of running on Dunlops.

Miki Koyama is also no longer listed as a third driver for the Anest Iwata Lexus RC F GT3, but remains a Toyota junior driver and will participate in Super Taikyu with apr in 2024.

Igor Fraga and Yuga Furutani both stay on at the Arnage Racing-run Anest Iwata squad for another season.