🇯🇵 Kazuki Nakajima

Kazuki Nakajima is a retired professional endurance racing driver, FIA Platinum graded, who spent most of his career with Toyota Gazoo Racing in the World Endurance Championship. His record spans 19 seasons from 2004 to 2024, beginning in Formula 3 and moving through the single-seater ladder before establishing himself in sportscar racing from 2011 onward. He contested 36 Formula 1 starts for Williams between 2007 and 2009 but found his primary success in multiclass endurance racing.[1]

In the WEC, Nakajima won three consecutive manufacturers' championships with Toyota from 2017 to 2019, taking 17 wins and 37 podiums across 59 starts in the series. He also raced in Super GT, where he claimed seven wins and eleven podiums in 51 starts for Lexus Team Au Tom's between 2011 and 2019. His final indexed season came in 2021 in the WEC, where he finished second in the championship standings with three wins and five podiums from six rounds. His last recorded activity was in the Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie in 2024 with Toyota Gazoo Racing.[2]

Nakajima raced regularly against established professionals of the highest calibre. He split his WEC appearances closely with Kamui Kobayashi, a fellow Platinum-graded professional and 2021 WEC Hypercar champion, and proved consistently competitive against Kohei Hirate, a multiple Super GT and Super Formula entrant. In his single-seater years, Nakajima finished ahead of Lewis Hamilton five times and Nico Rosberg seven times, both generational talents in their own eras, though this represented a small fraction of their meetings across the grid.