Toyota Gazoo Racing, winner of the 2018 and 2019 24 Hours of Le Mans, is taking up the sim-racing challenge to compete at the Virtual 24 Hours of Le Mans. The event will be held on 13-14 June 2020, the dates originally planned for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, now postponed to 19-20 September 2020 due to the global health crisis.

Car #7 will feature the factory drivers and 2019-20 FIA WEC World Endurance Championship leaders Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López, alongside 23-year-old sim-racer and Le Mans native Maxime Brient. Sébastien Buemi and Brendon Hartley both feature in the #8 car. They will be joined by Kenta Yamashita, a recruit from the Toyota Gazoo Racing Young Drivers Programme replacing Kazuki Nakajima, and 23-year-old Dutch sim-racer Yuri Kasdorp. Conway, Buemi, Brient and Kasdorp will be racing on simulators in the European homes, Hartley will be competing from New Zealand, and Kobayashi and Yamashita will be based in Tokyo.
The grid will also feature the #10 car fielded by Toyota Gazoo Racing ARG (Argentina). It will be driven by Nelson Piquet Jr, Julian Santero, Fabrizio Gobbi and Morena Sirica.

Here are the liveries for the #7 and #8 cars:

The driver crews will be backed by a dedicated engineering team based in Toyota Gazoo Racing’s HQ in Cologne (Germany), where the settings and race strategy will be discussed and developed. The competition’s rules require a minimum four drivers per car, including at least one sim-racer who will share their experience of the rFactor 2 gaming platform and its possibilities.
There are no LMP1 prototypes at the Virtual 24 Hours of Le Mans, so instead Toyota Gazoo Racing will be competing with two Oreca 07 LMP2s specially adapted to sport the TSO Hybrid livery.

The final test race ahead of the Virtual 24 Hours of Le Mans will last six hours and is scheduled for this Sunday, 7 June at 10:00 CET.

See the full entry list for the Virtual 24 Hours of Le Mans.

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