A Le Mans Winner Climbs Into an F1 Car: Ryo Hirakawa Gets His First Grand Prix Outing of 2026 With Haas

• Ryo Hirakawa, a 24 Hours of Le Mans winner and one of the most decorated endurance racers of his generation, took over Esteban Ocon’s Haas for first practice at the Austrian Grand Prix, his first Formula 1 weekend outing of 2026.
• The 32 year old has spent his career proving himself in sportscars, including a recent podium at this year’s Le Mans for Toyota, yet a permanent grand prix seat has stayed just out of reach.
• His run at the Red Bull Ring is part Haas data exercise, part audition, and part race against the clock for a driver who openly admits time is not on his side.

Most of the young drivers handed a Formula 1 car at the Austrian Grand Prix are looking forward, dreaming of a career that has barely begun. Ryo Hirakawa is different. When he climbed into Esteban Ocon’s Haas for first practice at the Red Bull Ring, he did so as a man who has already won some of the biggest races in the world, and who is still chasing the one prize that has always eluded him. At 32, with a Le Mans triumph already on his record, Hirakawa is not auditioning for a future. He is fighting to grab a chance before the window closes.

It is one of the more unusual stories on the grid. Formula 1’s rookie practice rules are designed to give inexperienced drivers seat time, but the definition catches more than just teenagers. Hirakawa qualifies because he has never started a grand prix, even though his racing résumé would shame many who have. His presence in the Haas garage on Friday turned a routine data session into something a little more romantic: a genuine champion of another discipline, getting his shot at the category he grew up wanting most.

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A Champion in Every Category but This One

Hirakawa’s standing in endurance racing is beyond question. He won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2022 alongside Sebastien Buemi and Brendon Hartley, the crown jewel of the sportscar calendar and one of the hardest races on earth to win. He has been a central figure in Toyota’s World Endurance Championship campaigns ever since, a driver trusted to deliver through the night when fatigue and pressure break lesser competitors. Only weeks ago he stood on the podium again at Le Mans, finishing third for Toyota in this year’s edition of the great race.

That blend of speed and resilience is exactly the profile Formula 1 teams say they value, and yet the grand prix door has never fully opened for him. He spent time as a reserve at Alpine before the connection that now defines his F1 life took hold. When Toyota deepened its technical partnership with Haas late in 2024, Hirakawa came with it, joining the American team as test and reserve driver. The relationship gives Haas access to Toyota’s vast engineering resources, and it gives Hirakawa a foot in the Formula 1 paddock that he has worked his whole career to plant.

The Run at the Red Bull Ring

Austria marks his first F1 weekend involvement of the 2026 season, and the assignment was Ocon’s VF-26 for the opening hour. For a driver used to triple stints in the dark at Le Mans, a single hour of practice is a sprint by comparison, with no margin to settle in. He had to be on the pace early, deliver the run plan the engineers needed, and avoid the small mistakes that get magnified when a stand-in is behind the wheel. Haas, fighting for consistency in a tight midfield, could not afford to lose meaningful Friday running, so the team needed Hirakawa to be sharp and clean from the moment he left the garage.

None of that fazes a driver who has handled far more intense pressure in machines that race for a full day and night. If anything, the challenge of an F1 car suits him. The cars are unforgiving, the tyres demand a delicate touch, and the rewards for getting it right are immediate on the timing screens. For Hirakawa, a clean, competitive session is its own argument, a way of telling the people who decide these things that experience and racecraft should count for something even when the calendar says you are no longer young.

There is also a cultural dimension to the run that is easy to miss from outside Japan. Hirakawa came up through a system that produces ferociously quick drivers but rarely sends them all the way to a Formula 1 race seat. Each time one of them takes the wheel of a grand prix car, even for an hour, it lands as a genuine event back home, a sign that the path is not completely closed. Hirakawa carries that hope quietly, aware that his success or failure is watched closely by a generation of Japanese racers wondering whether the journey he is on is one worth attempting themselves.

Racing the Clock

What gives Hirakawa’s story its edge is his own honesty about it. He has been candid that these outings are a step toward a goal rather than the goal itself, and that he wants a regular Formula 1 seat while he is still young enough to make the most of it. He has framed his ambition plainly, saying he is trying to earn a full-time drive in the future and hoping it happens before he is, in his own words, too old. There is no pretending the math is easy. Drivers do not usually break into Formula 1 in their thirties, and the grid grows younger with each passing season.

Still, the sport has shown it can make room for the unconventional. Teams value drivers who can develop a car, who give precise feedback, and who never panic under pressure, all qualities forged in the crucible of endurance racing. Hirakawa offers every one of them, plus the marketing pull of a strong following in Japan and the backing of a manufacturer as serious as Toyota. If a vacancy appears and a team wants a safe, experienced pair of hands rather than a gamble on a teenager, his name belongs in that conversation.

More Than a Data Run

For Haas, the session was about numbers, tyre understanding and ticking off one of the team’s mandatory rookie runs. For Hirakawa, it was something larger. Every lap was a chance to remind Formula 1 that he is here, that he is quick, and that a Le Mans winner does not stop wanting the one thing he has never had simply because the years are passing. He climbed out of the car when the hour was up, handed it back to Ocon, and returned to the role of reserve, but the message was sent.

The cruelty and the beauty of his position are wrapped together. Few drivers in the world have achieved what Hirakawa has, and few are still chasing so hard for a prize that may never come. In Austria he answered the only question he can actually control, the one about whether he can still get the job done in a Formula 1 car. The harder question, about whether anyone will give him a permanent one, stays open. For now, he keeps driving, keeps proving the point, and keeps racing the clock.

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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