Toyota opts against hiring Leupen replacement for 2025 WEC campaign

Toyota is not planning to replace Rob Leupen as team director of its World Endurance Championship squad for next season.

It has revealed that the duties at the race track undertaken by the Dutchman, who is leaving Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe in Cologne after 30 years of service, will be taken up by existing team members.

TGRE vice-chairman Kazuki Nakajima explained that the plan is “to spread the responsibility with not only one successor”.

The three-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner, who moved into a management role after his retirement from the cockpit at the end of 2021, took on Leupen’s role at this month’s 2024 WEC finale in Bahrain.

He stressed that Leupen’s departure, which was announced the day before the Bahrain event started, “shouldn’t change too much for the race team”.

“I don’t expect to have a new face in the team; maybe we will have a slightly different structure,” he said.

#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

Photo by: Shameem Fahath

He pointed out that TGR also has Kamui Kobayashi as team principal, a role he combines with driving, and David Floury as technical director.

Leupen, 60, is also standing down as managing director of TGRE, and it is likely he will be replaced from within, although Nakajima refused to go into detail.

“I think we have good people in our company who deserve to take some responsibility, but I will not talk about the possibilities,” he said.

Nakajima name-checked Peter Hesse, who took the role of director of business development and customer motorsport in February of this year.

Leupen is leaving TGRE, which was formerly known as Toyota Motorsport GmbH (TMG), as part of a management restructure that began earlier in the year with Pascal Vasselon being relieved of the technical directorship he had held since 2006.

Toyota recruited Leupen in 1995 for a human resources role and he moved up the company structure to consecutively become general manager, director of business operations and, from 2015, managing director.

He was referred to as either team or race director in the context of the WEC operation on the Japanese marque's return to top-flight sportscar racing on the rebirth of the series in 2012.

Leupen is leaving TGRE at the end of the year, but agreed to step down from his operational role within the WEC team prior to Bahrain.