Kamui Kobayashi has carried out a Formula 1 test with Haas, more than a decade on from his last race in F1.

The Japanese driver headed along to the south of France to carry out a test with the Haas F1 team, ending a decade-long absence from a Formula 1 cockpit.

Kamui Kobayashi carries out F1 test

Kobayashi arrived in Formula 1 in 2009 with Toyota, being given the call-up to replace the injured Timo Glock towards the end of the season after spending the previous two years as the Japanese manufacturer’s test and reserve driver for its F1 team.

Toyota pulled out of Formula 1 after that season, but Kobayashi’s bravery and skill had already been noticed – leading to him securing a drive with Sauber, where he drove for the next three seasons.

Despite securing a famous podium at his home race at Suzuka in late 2012, Kobayashi was dropped for ’13 and began racing in sportscars before making a return to F1 with Caterham in 2014. However, the car proved slow and unreliable, with Kobayashi toiling away at the back of the field.

Since then, Kobayashi has raced in Japan’s sportscar and single-seater scene in Super GT and Super Formula, as well as carving out a hugely successful career in the World Endurance Championship where he has won the championship and the Le Mans 24 Hours, as well as being a regular front-runner across all these categories.

Kobayashi has been part of Toyota Gazoo Racing for the last decade and, following on from Toyota forming a partnership with Haas, the now 38-year-old was given the chance to return to an F1 cockpit with the American team in a test at Paul Ricard in France last week.

He drove the 2023 VF-23 for the outing, his first appearance in an F1 car since climbing out of his Caterham at the end of the 2014 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Carried out under Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) regulations, Kobayashi’s return is understood to have been down to Toyota wishing to give him an opportunity to test a modern F1 car, with the TPC programme having already given several Japanese drivers an opportunity this season.

“Bit of fun with this beast again after 11 years,” Kobayashi posted on social media afterwards.

“Thank you for this opportunity, Toyota and Haas! Also big big thanks my neck last 2days was strong 💪”

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A post shared by MoneyGram Haas F1 Team (@haasf1team)

It’s only since this year that Haas has been able to carry out TPC running, following the agreement with Toyota.

As such, such running is allowing Haas to carry out essential training of its personnel – making the outings beneficial for both sides as a driver gets to hone their skills while the team can practice its processes and operational systems.

“TPC is very important in terms of training personnel, we have just over 300 people, and we have no contingency in personnel,” team boss Ayao Komatsu said following the confirmation of Toyota’s partnership with Haas.

“So if let’s say one race engineer, one performance engineer decides to leave or has a programme not to attend a race we are really struggling, on the limit all the time, and in order to improve the organisation you cannot be that kind of survival stage as a baseline, we’ve got to build up our organisation, so through TPC we can start training our engineers, our mechanics, having back-up people there.”

As well as TPC running, Toyota’s expertise and resources has allowed Haas to run its own simulator programme.

“We never had a simulator on site in Banbury, ever,” Komatsu said.

“We’ve only got a very limited number of personnel.

“Trackside engineers, we’ve got what you see on the trackside and there’s not many people behind that.

“So imagine in between races doing a simulator session in Italy, I cannot ask my UK-based guys to come back from those 24 races and then spend another 10 weeks in Italy to do simulator sessions.

“Without this partnership, it’s very difficult for us to have a simulator programme.

“One, we don’t have the hardware, so we need to find the hardware, we need to buy hardware, we need to install it, then it takes ages to get that simulator up and running and to get good correlation etcetera.

“TGR has expertise in the simulator, both for themselves and for their customer projects, so they have the hardware and they have the expertise, in terms of operation, in terms of cueing – all the aspects of a simulator operation.

“So, again we are going to be taking the benefit of that through this partnership.”

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