A spotlight on Takuma Sato

The fourth and final spotlight on the home heroes for the 6 Hours of Fuji falls on the popular and very successful Takuma Sato who will be making his sports prototype debut with OAK Racing at the FIA World Endurance Championship rounds in Asia, beginning with the 6 Hours of Fuji.

Now contesting the IndyCar Series, Sato is perhaps best known for an F1 career that spanned 92 appearances between 2002 and 2008.  However, the Tokyo-born driver first began on two wheels rather than four competing as a teenage bicycle racer. 

In 1996 he scraped together the money for a kart and the following year he entered Honda's Suzuka Racing School scholarship, winning the prize and a fully paid drive in the 1998 All-Japan Formula 3 Championship.  However, he chose not to enter this in order to pursue his desire of reaching Formula One and, to do that, he had to go to Europe.

An extremely successful time followed for Taku, becoming 2001 British F3 Champion and following in the footsteps of drivers such as Ayrton Senna and David Brabham, plus victories in the international F3 Masters at Zandvoort and Macau Grand Prix events.  This naturally brought him to the attention of F1 teams and he went on to race for Jordan (alongside Giancarlo Fisichella), BAR and Super Aguri. 

The 35-year-old Japanese driver, who now lives in Monaco, will contest the 6 Hours of Fuji  in the Onroak Automotive designed and built No.15 OAK Pescarolo LMP1, powered by HPD’s proven AR6-LMV8 engine. He will be alongside Bertrand Baguette and Dominik Kraihamer who return to the car’s cockpit after completing the British, Brazilian and Bahraini rounds aboard the No.35 Morgan in the LMP2 class.

Fiona Miller

Photo:  Takuma Sato who will be driving in the 6 Hours of Fuji and 6 Hours of Shanghai for OAK Racing in the No.15 OAK Pescarolo-HPD LMP1