Toyota just isn’t planning to exchange Rob Leupen as crew director of its World Endurance Championship squad for subsequent season.
It has revealed that the duties on the race monitor undertaken by the Dutchman, who’s leaving Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe in Cologne after 30 years of service, will likely be taken up by current crew members.
TGRE vice-chairman Kazuki Nakajima defined that the plan is “to unfold the duty with not just one successor”.
The three-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner, who moved right into a administration position after his retirement from the cockpit on the finish of 2021, took on Leupen’s position at this month’s 2024 WEC finale in Bahrain.
He confused that Leupen’s departure, which was introduced the day earlier than the Bahrain occasion began, “shouldn’t change an excessive amount of for the race crew”.
“I don’t count on to have a brand new face within the crew; perhaps we could have a barely totally different construction,” he stated.
#7 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota GR010 – Hybrid: Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, Nyck de Vries, #8 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota GR010 – Hybrid: Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley, Ryo Hirakawa
Photograph by: Shameem Fahath
He identified that TGR additionally has Kamui Kobayashi as crew principal, a task he combines with driving, and David Floury as technical director.
Leupen, 60, can also be standing down as managing director of TGRE, and it’s possible he will likely be changed from inside, though Nakajima refused to enter element.
“I feel we’ve good individuals in our firm who should take some duty, however I can’t discuss concerning the prospects,” he stated.
Nakajima name-checked Peter Hesse, who took the position of director of enterprise improvement and buyer motorsport in February of this yr.
Leupen is leaving TGRE, which was previously often called Toyota Motorsport GmbH (TMG), as a part of a administration restructure that started earlier within the yr with Pascal Vasselon being relieved of the technical directorship he had held since 2006.
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Toyota recruited Leupen in 1995 for a human sources position and he moved up the corporate construction to consecutively turn into normal supervisor, director of enterprise operations and, from 2015, managing director.
He was known as both crew or race director within the context of the WEC operation on the Japanese marque’s return to top-flight sportscar racing on the rebirth of the sequence in 2012.
Leupen is leaving TGRE on the finish of the yr, however agreed to step down from his operational position throughout the WEC crew previous to Bahrain.
