Tommi Mäkinen will be appointed the role of Motorsport Advisor to Toyota Motor Corporation and will take the job on starting 2021. While he and his team at Tommi Mäkinen Racing Oy have helped Toyota Gazoo Racing create success in the World Rally and World Endurance Championships, his new role will expand beyond motorsport. In fact, Toyota expects Mäkinen to contribute directly to “advancing the manufacturing of ever-better cars”.
This appointment comes just days after Toyota Gazoo Racing took home their third win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Here’s the press release with more.
PRESS RELEASE
Tommi Mäkinen will be appointed as a Motorsport Advisor to Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota) from January 2021, with the aim of further advancing the manufacturing of ever-better cars.
Behind the appointment is Tommi Mäkinen’s impressive contribution to the supercharged re-ignition of Toyota’s World Rally operations from 2017. Tommi Mäkinen and his team of professionals at Tommi Mäkinen Racing Oy helped Toyota to develop a highly competitive rally car and also built the team, TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team, to run it at the highest level of world rallying, the FIA World Rally Championship. Already in 2018, the second year after their return, Toyota earned the manufacturers’ world championship title, and in 2019 they won the drivers’ and co-drivers’ world championship titles.
With this expertise, Toyota is sure Tommi Mäkinen is capable of contributing in even wider fields of motorsports, such as the development of motorsports-bred GR vehicles, strategic planning of motorsport activities, and driver talent development. Appointing him as a motorsport advisor of Toyota Motor Corporation, the brand is looking forward to his advice on strategy formulation and organizational operations.
Consequently, the WRC project built by Tommi Mäkinen Racing Oy―TOYOTA GAZOO Racing WRT and the design and development of World Rally Cars―will be managed directly by Toyota. From 2021 on the WRC operations will be run by TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Europe GmbH, the Toyota group company responsible for the core functions of Toyota motorsports in Europe. We plan to benefit from Tommi Mäkinen’s resolution, learning from his world-leading vehicle development know-how, cultivated at TMR, in order to link this to specific business development. We will also further strengthen our systems, including the acceleration of practical training of human resources. Still, TGR WRT continues its activities both in Finland and Estonia as it has been, using the existing human resources and some facilities originating from TMR.
