Mike Conway’s Toyota Farewell Comes With a Title Still in Reach

Mike Conway will end his 12 seasons with Toyota’s World Endurance Championship team at the 6 Hours of Monza on November 8, and he still has a chance to go out as a world champion.

The race is the season finale and the last of Conway’s full-time career, and it will be his 86th with the team since he joined in 2014. He has won 20 of those races, including two Le Mans victories, and has stood on the podium 47 times. Two of those wins came at Monza, the same track where he now has to overturn a 17-point deficit.

Toyota announced Conway’s retirement from full-time competition in its Monza preview on October 30. A one-two finish at Barcelona already gave the team the manufacturers’ title and guaranteed that one of its two crews takes the drivers’ title. Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryō Hirakawa lead in the #8 TR010 Hybrid, and a top-five finish gives them their third world championship together after 2022 and 2023. Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries are chasing them in the #7 car and are trying for their first title as a trio. Conway and Kobayashi have two titles apiece from 2019-20 and 2021, while de Vries is after his first.

"It’s the last one for me at Monza but there’s still lots to play for in terms of the drivers’ title," Conway said. "It obviously got a lot harder for us, but we’ve still got a shot, so we’ll give it our all and do our absolute best." He thanked Toyota and "personally" Morizo-san, the racing name of chairman Akio Toyoda, and called his time with the team "a real fun ride."

Kobayashi, who is both team principal and a driver of the #7 car, did not pretend the job is easy. "The points gap is pretty big, but we’ll do our best," he said. "I hope we can win the race for the perfect end to the season, and the best farewell to Mike." On the other side of the garage, Hartley noted that "championship deciders are always stressful, and you never know what will happen," and Buemi said the #8 crew is in a strong position but that "it won’t be an easy race."

The stakes go beyond the title. Monza closes the debut season of the TR010 Hybrid, which has already delivered both world championships and four race wins, including the Le Mans 24 Hours and the team’s home race at Fuji Speedway. The team has won twice at Monza, in 2021 and 2023, and has reached the podium four times in its three WEC races there. De Vries will race there in a Hypercar for the first time.

Two practice sessions run on Friday, November 6, followed by Hypercar qualifying on Saturday at 3 pm CET. The race starts at 11 am local time on Sunday, November 8.

The Toyota Report Take

Conway has spent 12 years as one of the quietest stars in sports car racing, the guy who did his stints fast and clean while the bigger names took the headlines. Twenty wins and two Le Mans trophies is a career most drivers would trade anything for, and he’s leaving at a moment when Toyota’s new car has just had one of the great debut seasons.

The math says he probably won’t get a storybook ending, because the #8 car only has to finish fifth and that crew rarely makes mistakes. It would still be hard not to root for it. If the #7 wins the race and the title falls to Conway in his last start, it will be the best sendoff anyone in this team has ever had.