Tsutomu Tomita To Stand Down

By Luke Marc Carlile-Stanton
April 30 2007

Toyota Motorsport have announced that Tsutomu Tomita will stand down in his role of Chairman and Team Principal of Toyota F1 at the end of June 2007. His replacement will be Tadashi Yamashina, Toyota Motorsport Vice Chairman.

Tomita has been at Cologne in Germany which is Toyota F1 HQ since 2003 but in June he will return to Toyota's homeland in Japan where other duties lie waiting for the 63 year old. Tomita has been involved with Toyota motorsport since the late 80's and has overseen Toyota's victories in the World Rally Championship and Le Mans 24 hours. Tomita oversaw Toyota's break through into the United States where former Toyota-F1-Driver Cristiano Da Matta claimed the first CART Title for the marque. In 2003 Toyota won on It's IRL debut at the most prestigious event in American Single Seater racing; The Indianapolis 500 won by Chip Gannasi's Scott Dixon.

He has been part of Panasonic Toyota Racing since its conception and helped build it into an ambitious team with the potential to succeed in F1.

Tomita said: "Since 2002 I have been involved in Toyota's Formula 1 project which has been one of the most challenging and exciting periods of my career. In fact the detailed preparation for entry into Formula 1 started more than four years before we entered our first race."

"I am pleased to pass this on to Mr Yamashina whom I am sure will continue to build from the platform which has been established over the past six years. I am looking forward to celebrating Toyota's first victory in Formula 1 which I believe will happen sooner rather than later, based on the technological capability and competent team of people which has and is being established in Cologne." He continued.

From TTF1, A  big thank you Tsutomu.