Kobayashi to follow fellow ex-F1 stars racing in NASCAR

Kamui-Kobayashi

The appeal of NASCAR Cup racing has received a big boost in recent years, as it has attracted a string of top names from other championships including F1. Now it's the turn of Kamui Kobayashi to make his stock car bow.

It's been announced that the Japanese driver will make his NASCAR debut in August in the 'Verizon 200 at the Brickyard' which will take place at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.

The 36-year-old briefly drove for Toyota in F1 in 2009 and then for Sauber between 2010 and 2012 and then Caterham in 2014 before moving to the FIA World Endurance championship full-time.

Read also: Toyota and Ferrari locked in two horse race at Le Mans

Kobayashi was part of the race-winning Toyota team (of which he's now also team principal) in 2021 and has been on the podium on five additional occasions since 2016.

However this year's campaign didn't go to plan and he was forced to retire after being involved in a multiple car incident only ten hours into the race.

Kamui-Kobayashi

But Kobayashi is already looking forward to his next big new challenge at the wheel of the #67 23XI Racing at IMS, a car that's also been driven by X-Games gold medalist, stunt performer and TV presenter Travis Pastrana

Kobayashi is following in the footsteps of two former F1 world champions, Kimi Raikkonen and Jenson Button, who took part in the Cup race at the Circuit of the Americas in March. Button finished 18th while Raikkonen was classified in 29th.

Button is due to race again at Indy, meaning he will be competing with Kobayashi on track. Before that, Button will also be at the Chicago Street Course in July as part of a three-race deal with the Rick Ware Racing team.

Meanwhile the Briton is competing in this weekend's Le Mans 24 Hour race in a NASCAR-entered converted Chevrolet Camaro stock car with co-drivers Mike Rockefeller and seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.