Photo: Toyota Racing NZ

The 2016 Toyota Racing Series will begin next weekend with a field of 19 cars at Ruapuna.

With last year’s dominant team M2 Competition havingalready completed its six-driver line-up, the Giles Motorsport and ETEC Motorsport outfits have also had their full rosters confirmed.

Giles will also run six cars withCarlin’s Canadian MSA Formula signingDevlin DeFrancesco andPro Mazda-boundArgentineNicolas Dapero joining the team.

They will race alongside returning New ZealanderJames Munro, Austrian Formula Renault 2.0 racerFerdinand Habsburg, Polish Euroformula Open driverAntoni Ptak and Dapero’s Juncos team-mate, AmericanWill Owen.

New Zealand Formula Ford champion Taylor Cockerton, whose plans to enter TRS wererevealed in July, will race for ETEC, alongside French Pro Mazda driverTimothe Buret and Brazilian F3 competitorRodrigo Baptista.

Completing ETEC’s line-up is AmericanTheo Bean, a 23-year-old whose background is in historic racing but is part of the same management stable as Owen.

Taking the entry list up to 19 as a late addition is local driverBrendon Leitch, who will continue for a third season with Victory Motor Racing alongside Brazilian FR2.0 driverBruno Baptista and German karting graduateJulian Hanses.

Leitch’s brother Damon seems set not take part in TRS for the first time since his 2011 debut, after five successive top-eight campaigns.

The grid size is one fewer than in 2015 after a deal for KiwiJamie Conroy (a reverse-grid race-winner with M2 last year) to return fell through.

M2’s 2016 line-up consists of double Brazilian F3 championPedro Piquet, MSA Formula championLando Norris, his new FR2.0 team-mate and Force India juniorJehan Daruvala, Ferrari’s Chinese protegeGuan Yu Zhou, GP2 racerArtem Markelov and Van Amersfoort Formula 4 driverKami Laliberte.

Toyota Racing Series 2016 entry list