Perera retained to head Toyota development scheme.

Leading F3 Euroseries rookie Franck Perera has retained his place on the Toyota F1 development programme in 2005, where he will be joined by a new cast of hopefuls aiming to follow in Ryan Briscoe's footsteps.

Briscoe is the first of the scheme's selections to graduate to bigger and better things, having landed a Toyota-powered IRL ride with Chip Ganassi this season, and his successors will include Japanese hopefuls Kohei Hirate and Kamui Kobayashi in a three-man line-up alongside Perera. The consolidation means that there is no place for several of those included on the 2004 roster, including underfunded British star Ben Clucas.

Perera, who took pole position at the Bahrain F3 Superprix last year, will remain in Formula Three for another season, and will continue to contest the Euroseries with Italian team Prema. He will be joined in the series by Hirate, who joins Team Rosberg after finishing as runner-up in the Italian Formula Renault championship.

"We have always had a good relationship with Prema Powerteam in both F3 and Formula Renault, and we are pleased to continue our co-operation into 2005," explained Toyota Motorsport executive vice-president Yoshiaki Kinoshita, "We are still learning about the F3 series, so we have developed an additional contract with Team Rosberg. They are an F3 team with a top quality in engineering talent and one with whom we hope to be successful with in the future."

Kobayashi, meanwhile, will contest a second season of Italian Formula Renault, again with Prema, as well as racing in the Eurocup championship.

"Looking at our overall driver line-up from 2004, we wanted to select who we believe are the best all-round drivers," Kinoshita continued, "Kamui was second best of the rookies last season, but he won two races and we believe he will be a real challenger for the title in 2005."

The development initiative will be renamed as the 'Toyota Young Drivers Programme' in 2005, replacing the previous 'Toyota Drivers Academy' moniker banner that had been in place since 2003. The TDP will continue to operate from Toyota Motorsport's base in Cologne, under the guidance of Noritoshi Arai.

Although the TDP remains a European-based programme, the scheme will continue to be united with Toyota's successful Japanese programme at the Formula Toyota Racing School, which will also adopt the TDP name from 2005.

"At Toyota, we always operate on a global scale, so it is logical that we bring our young driver programmes closer together," Kinoshita concluded, "With the merger of FTRS and TDA, both projects will enjoy the benefits of a unified management team.as we look to find and develop Toyota's racing talent of the future."