🇯🇵 Kazuki Nakajima

Kazuki Nakajima is an established professional endurance racing driver, FIA Platinum-graded, who spent his career principally in the World Endurance Championship for Toyota Gazoo Racing. He competed across 19 seasons from 2004 to 2024, accumulating 201 starts and 25 wins across single-seaters, national sportscar racing and international endurance competition. His primary record lies in WEC, where he scored 59 starts, 17 wins and 37 podiums across a decade.[1]

Nakajima won three consecutive World Endurance Championships with Toyota, in 2017, 2018 and 2019. His endurance career was built on consistency at the highest level of international sportscar racing; in his final indexed season of 2021 WEC, he took three wins and five podiums from six rounds, finishing second in the championship. He began his racing career in single-seaters, competing in Formula 3 Euro Series, GP2 and Formula 1 for Williams from 2007 to 2009, where he raced against and occasionally outpaced generational talent such as Lewis Hamilton. He also raced Super GT in Japan, winning seven times across nine seasons, and returned to domestic competition in Super Formula late in his career.[2]

The WEC grid he inhabited included Kamui Kobayashi, another established professional and Platinum-graded driver who won the 2021 WEC Hypercar title, with whom Nakajima was closely matched across multiple seasons. His three consecutive Le Mans victories from 2018 to 2020 placed him among the race's most successful modern drivers.