Toyota adds Ritomo Miyata to WEC Challenge programme

Miyata, a flow winner in both SUPER GT and Successfully-organized Components, will accompany the Toyota World Endurance Championship squad for the last rounds of the season that manufacture no longer conflict with his unique commitments in Japan, starting with the Le Mans 24 Hours next month.

The 23-one year-faded will even be focused on construction work at Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe’s Cologne imperfect.

Toyota’s assertion revealed that Miyata already participated in a simulator session at TGR-E last one year and “impressed the crew with his riding performance, and space competitive lap events, to blueprint his alternative as a WEC Distress driver”.

It added that Miyata’s “continued participation within the programme will be decided fixed with performances and construction growth”.

Miyata, who has been vocal about searching to flow a long way off places sooner or later, currently represents leading Toyota squad TOM’S in both SUPER GT’s top GT500 class and Successfully-organized Components.

He stepped as a lot as Successfully-organized Components plump-time in 2021 after winning the previous one year’s Successfully-organized Components Lights title, and secured his first victory within the single-seater series at Suzuka last month.

In SUPER GT, he scored a most valuable GT500 get alongside Sacha Fenestraz last one year at Fuji Speedway, and added a second triumph alongside new associate Sho Tsuboi on the an identical notice earlier this month.

The Toyota WEC Distress programme has been dormant since Kenta Yamashita became once chosen to flow within the LMP2 class for High Class Racing all the plan via the 2019-20 season.

Yamashita opted to accommodate his Eastern racing commitments on the conclusion of that marketing campaign.

That opened the door for Ryo Hirakawa to protect terminate his situation on Toyota’s roster of test drivers and no longer straight away step as a lot as interchange the retiring Kazuki Nakajima as a flow driver for the initiate of the 2022 WEC marketing campaign.

Toyota’s assertion made no mention of any on-notice opportunities for Miyata. A conflict between the final round of SUPER GT at Motegi and the WEC’s Bahrain weekend tips out an appearance within the typical-or-backyard quit-of-season rookie test.

To boot to, it became once announced that two Toyota-backed Eastern Components 4 drivers, Jin Nakamura and Rikuto Kobayashi, will protect terminate part in a training session on the Le Mans 24 Hours that can allow them to “experience first-hand how WEC drivers and engineers protect terminate on the difficulty of Le Mans”.