Kazuki Nakajima's First Le Mans Drive

Kazuki Nakajima, Toyota Racing team's driver, makes his virtual debut at Le Mans 24 Hours track on the Toyota Motorsport GmbH's simulator. He also discovers the Toyota GT-One in the workshop at Cologne.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• 24 Hours Of Le Mans
• Toyota Hybrid
• Toyota Racing
• Toyota LMP1
• Kazuki Nakajima

[Panagiotisf1]

@officialcalummenzies i thought u ment the simulator car

[AlexMacIsKING]

@deggis4 See, but how he was talking about being surprised by the ling high speed straight and the hard breaking for the corner, which he did say he had known about, but not the high speed curves. I mean I know that want Jap drivers, but there are deffinently more qualified ones. What about Seiji Ara? He won in 2004, is a Jap, and didn't have a ride at the time they signed this guy. He signed with Pescarolo last week but it's seems to me they had better options.

[officialcalummenzies]

@Panagiotisf1 4:16 is the 2011 car that never raced. It's the same shape and colour as the Pirelli test F1 car which is the 2011 Toyota with Pirelli stickers on it!

[Panagiotisf1]

@officialcalummenzies 2007 toyota f1

[deggis4]

@AlexMacIsKING Obviously nationality plays a role here, but there's probably some difference between when a racing driver says "I don't know the track" and when somebody else says so. In some interview Nakajima said has watched the races and on top of this his dad raced there in the 80s

Plus, Super GT seems to be a good training ground for LMP. From last year's winning car, two drivers came from Super GT (Lotterer & Trelyer, altough both had some experience from Le Mans already).

[AlexMacIsKING]

Is the brand name and the engine. That's a bad hiring system. I'm sorry but it is. Especially when there are so many other capable drivers out there who don't have rides. Now you all can thumb down the comments all you want, I don't care. But think about the logic of that for a second because there I could easily find a more eligible candidate.

[AlexMacIsKING]

So basically you hired a guy with no knowledge of Le Mans to run instead of a fully capable driver who at least at some point in his life has seen video of a lap or even played it in a video or better yet raced it, just so you could put a Jap driver in your Jap cars? Hell it would make more since for you guys to throw in an American who has seen the track before in some form since you guys manufacture so much of your stuff here. Or a German because the only thing of the team that isn't German

[AlexMacIsKING]

Wait, back up a second. You hired a driver to run the 24 Hours of Le Mans who didn't know about the Mulsanne Straight, didn't know about the Porsche Curves, and didn't have any concept for the track in general? Did this raise flags in anyone elses head? Has he ever even watched any of Le Mans before? He didn't even research it when he found out he may be your drive?

[rmag1993]

I love the TS030 car a lot.

They will make a life difficult for the Audi.

[BeckMax]

I love Toyota cars!!