Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Formula 2 race-winner Zak O’Sullivan has secured a seat in Super Formula for 2025, Toyota has announced.
O’Sullivan stepped up to F2 for 2024 with ART Grand Prix and won the Monaco feature race after a late pit-stop under safety car conditions as well as the sprint race at the Hungaroring. However, he vacated his seat before the final three rounds while sitting 14th in the standings, citing funding reasons, and was replaced by fellow Williams junior driver Luke Browning.
He was a late addition to the post-season SF rookie test at Suzuka this month with Kondo Racing and has now been named as a race driver for the team, replacing Kazuto Kotaka alongside Kenta Yamashita.
Kotaka, the 2022 Super Formula Lights champion, moves to TGM Grand Prix – which switches from Honda power to become a team for Toyota development drivers – together with Hibiki Taira, who was SF Lights runner-up in 2023 and contested four SF rounds last year for Team Impul in a car also driven by Theo Pourchaire, Nyck de Vries and Ben Barnicoat.
Impul welcomes an all-new line-up of Jota World Endurance Championship hypercar driver and former FIA F3 racer Oliver Rasmussen and long-time Nissan GT ace and 2017 Japanese F3 champion Mitsunori Takaboshi. Sacha Fenestraz, the 2019 Japanese F3 champion, returns to SF with TOM’S after two seasons in Formula E with Nissan.
Toyota has also confirmed plans for other drivers in its Driver Challenge Program, headed by F2 racer Ritomo Miyata. While Miyata will drive for ART in his second season in F2 – effectively replacing O’Sullivan – he will do with the support of a new collaboration between rival squad Hitech and Toyota, to be known as ‘Hitech TGR’.
Seita Nonaka, who finished third in his third season in SF Lights this year after being Japanese F4 champion in 2021, will serve as a reserve driver in SF alongside a racing campaign in Super GT’s GT300 class.
Rikuto Kobayashi will continue in SF Lights with TOM’S after finishing runner-up in 2024 having graduated to the series as Japanese F4 champion.
For Jin Nakamura, who was runner-up to Kobayashi in F4 and fourth in SF Lights this year, there will be a switch to Formula Regional with an R-ace GP drive in the Middle East and European championships.
Frenchman Esteban Masson will resume his single-seater career in SF Lights with TOM’S alongside an LMP2 drive in the European Le Mans Series. The 2021 French F4 and 2023 Eurocup-3 champion has gained Toyota support after racing a Lexus in WEC’s GT3 class and testing its hypercar this year.
Yuki Sano also joins SF Lights with TOM’S after finishing fourth in Japanese F4 and winning four races from as many starts in FRegional Japan.
Kiyoshi Umegaki and Tokiya Suzuki, who finished seventh and 10th in Japanese F4, will add FRegional Japan programmes alongside continuing in F4, where they will be joined in the TGR-DC Racing School line-up by Yuzuki Miura, Takahiro Kikuchi, Megumu Suzuki and Masana Muto.