I by no means fairly discovered Kazuki Nakijima’s motivation. Japan’s first second-generation driver, he was supported by Toyota the place his father Satoru was a Honda man, and in 2008 as group mate to Nico Rosberg chez Williams, he scored a sixth, two sevenths and two eighths, but it surely was arduous to understand how a lot his coronary heart was in it.
There was zero doubt about Kamui Kobayashi’s ardour for F1. It’s at all times a kind of issues with drivers from sure components of the world, most particularly from Japan, that we see a newcomer and saddle them with the thought that they “may simply be the perfect but” from their explicit birthplace.
LISTEN: Japanese hero Kamui Kobayashi on his racing career – and his part in Tsunoda’s rise to F1
Definitely, Kamui needed to bear that moniker in his days with Sauber. He was a troublesome fighter, as Japanese drivers so typically are, and like Suzuki and Sato, he would carry honour to his nation with a podium end for Sauber within the 2012 Japanese GP.
He received Le Mans with Toyota in 2021, and two FIA World Endurance Championship titles in 2019-20 and 2021, and immediately manages Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe’s FIA WEC programme.
