36 replies to this topic

[HistoryFan]

through the years, there were many teamowners. Many of them are very interesting. Now I searched all Japanese teamowners and came to this list:

Akira Akagi (Leyton House)
Wataru Ohashi (Footwork)
Fumio Akita (Super Aguri)
Aguri Suzuki (Super Aguri)

Were there others? And has anyone informations about Fumio Akita (career, shares at Super Aguri and so on)

Best
Michael

[renzobalbo]

Matsuhisa Kojima?

[Beedeeai]

Does anyone know what Akita actually did at Super Aguri?!?

[Richard Jenkins]

Originally posted by HistoryFan
through the years, there were many teamowners. Many of them are very interesting. Now I searched all Japanese teamowners and came to this list:

Akira Akagi (Leyton House)
Wataru Ohashi (Footwork)
Fumio Akita (Super Aguri)
Aguri Suzuki (Super Aguri)

Were there others? And has anyone informations about Fumio Akita (career, shares at Super Aguri and so on)

There's many more, as you haven't stipulated Grand Prix, there are hundreds:-

But if it's Grand Prix only - then add:
Soichiro Honda
Matsuhisa Kojima
Masao Ono (more a desginer but had input in management as well)
Tadashi Yamashina

[Arjan de Roos]

Toshiro Mifune (Yamura)

[Gregor Marshall]

Who owned Middlebridge/Brabham in the late 80s and early 90s?

[HistoryFan]

Originally posted by Beedeeai
Does anyone know what Akita actually did at Super Aguri?!?

No one could answer me that question! And no one could yet answer me, who Akita is...

@all: Thanks for helping to list them up.
Perhaps we can also list up the Japanese team owners from the IndyCar...
Suzuki co-owned Super Aguri Fernandez Racing and Panther racing.

[tobbe j]

I came and think about one of my old question when I read this post

Which was the owner to Heros Racing and Muritsu Racing Team in the 1976 and -77 Japan GP in the Private Tyrrell 007-5

[fndc]

Fumio Akita is a manager of Autobacs Racing Team Aguri.
He is Aguri's old friend.

Hiromu Tanaka was an owner of Heroes Racing.

Muritsu...Meiritsu ???

Middle Bridge is owned by Mr. Nakahashi ? I forgot.

[Formula Once]

Kenji Mimura (Maki, although I don't know if he actually owned the team).
Minoru Hayashi (Dome, although their F1 car never entered a GP of course).

[HistoryFan]

Originally posted by fndc
Fumio Akita is a manager of Autobacs Racing Team Aguri.
He is Aguri's old friend.

Hiromu Tanaka was an owner of Heroes Racing.

Muritsu...Meiritsu ???

Middle Bridge is owned by Mr. Nakahashi ? I forgot.

Thank you for that info! Was Akita involved in motorsport before Formula One? Autobacs and Super Aguri merged at the end of the 90s and take part in a lot of series, like Japanese GT series, Formula Nippon etc. Which role played Akita there?

[fndc]

Yes,he was a personal manager of Aguri Suzuki from 80's.
Autobacs is a sponsor of Aguri's team.


Middlebridge is owend by Kouji Nakauchi. I remember!

[HistoryFan]

Originally posted by fndc
Yes,he was a personal manager of Aguri Suzuki from 80's.
Autobacs is a sponsor of Aguri's team.


Middlebridge is owend by Kouji Nakauchi. I remember!

I thought that Autobacs had also a racing team and than merged with the Aguri's team...
But thanks for that infos!
Where did you have this infos from?

[fndc]

I got these info from Japanese magazines.

[HistoryFan]

Ko Gotoh was shareholder at Pacific in 1995. I don't know whether he was still at Pacific when they went back in Formula 3000 in 1996. Was he? How many shres did he have at Pacific?
Have you more infos at Gotoh? The other 2 shareholders at Pacific were Keith Wiggins and Bertrand Gachot.

[petefenelon]

Did that strange Japanese pop star actually take a share in Brabham in its dying days? Damon Kagure? (And his "Brabham Aid" appeal...)?

[HistoryFan]

Has anyone more informations about Akira Akagi? He was driving autocross and touring cars in Japan before he become team owner. Are there any results?

[HistoryFan]

I heard that Akagi was also involved in the Genoa F3000 team which was owned by Cesare Garibaldi. Is that right? I think he was only sponsor? Or what did he?

[fines]

Originally posted by HistoryFan
Has anyone more informations about Akira Akagi? He was driving autocross and touring cars in Japan before he become team owner. Are there any results?

You can find all results of JAF sanctioned racing, rallying, autocross and go-karting online, at http://www.jaf.or.jp.../fr/f_index.htm. In fact, I guess this huge database probably covers all of Japanese four-wheeled racing in the last four or five decades, since I imagine there wouldn't be much in the way of "outlaw" racing in Japan, similar to the situation in Germany, for example.

What's that? You can't use the website because you can't read Japanese? Too bad...;)

Well, actually I could guide you through it, but chances are you'd find the results of a JAF database search not very fruitful - and no, don't even ask, I'm not going to "translate" it ALL for you, abso-certainly no way! Oh, and before you groan 'n' moan, let it be known that when I myself found this very site for the first time some five or six years ago, I couldn't read any more Japanese than you! It's all documented within TNF, try a search for JAF, or Japanese race results... you're never too young or too old to learn!;)

There's also another problem: I don't know how Akagi-san's full name is written in Japanese. Akagi 赤木 is easy enough, but many Japanese personal names can have different "spellings", and for Akira it could be either 哲, or 彰, maybe 明, perhaps 晃, even 聡 etc. etc. etc., actually this is a name I've seen "spelt" quite literally a hundred different ways!

Someone know?

[HistoryFan]

Who owned the Speed Star Racing team who was competing in Japanese F2 and F3000 long time?

[fines]

From memory, I believe "Speed Star Wheels" was a sponsor, and may have sponsored more than one team. Will have to check when I have more time.

[alain_sl]

Originally posted by fines

There's also another problem: I don't know how Akagi-san's full name is written in Japanese. Akagi 赤木 is easy enough, but many Japanese personal names can have different "spellings", and for Akira it could be either 哲, or 彰, maybe 明, perhaps 晃, even 聡 etc. etc. etc., actually this is a name I've seen "spelt" quite literally a hundred different ways!

Someone know? [/B]

his name is spelt 赤城明 at Wikipedia
(link)

[fines]

Originally posted by fines
Akagi 赤木 is easy enough,

Well, so much for that!

But at least we have a name to put into the JAF database query, results are here:

http://www.jaf.or.jp...s/race/list.cgi?

Hmm, does that work? Anyway, it shows five races in 1985, and one in 1986. At a glance, a few endurance and "freshman" events - not quite sure what those abbreviations mean, but he apparently raced an RX-7, Mazda isn't it? No great shakes in results, although he won the very first race (Sugo, July 21 in 1985), driving a "Leyton House Skyline" (Nissan?), beating four other competitors - presumably all debutants (?), since a week later Akagi is 20th and last in a seemingly more ambitious try at Fuji. The winner's name is Uchida, doesn't ring an instant bell I'm afraid. :

[fines]

For the fun of it, I tried 赤木明, too, and voilà, I had another hit! Seems it's not so uncommon to "spell" it that way!;) July 27 in 1985 at Fuji, and it's very obviously the same man, driving a #32 "Leyton House EXA", whatever that is. He finished 13th and second to last.

[fines]

About "Speed Star", that's difficult - perhaps Tooru can come in here and help?

The earliest I can find is Speed Star sponsoring Kunimitsu Takahashi's F2000 March/BMW 742 in 1977. Later that year, Takahashi had a Kojima/BMW KE008, and Masao Segawa took over the March, both running under the Speed Star name. Segawa also ran an FJ1300 Maruchi?/Honda with SSW sponsorship that year, and there are several more appearances of SSW in FPacific and F3 as well.

Over the next five years or so, the team always appears to have had new March F2 chassis, and occasional guest drives by the likes of Didier Pironi, Eddie Cheever, Stephen South, Andrea de Cesaris, Stefan Johansson and Roberto Guerrero - maybe some western magazines had stories about that back in the days? Then Speed Star appears to be the main sponsor of Hasemi Motorsports, and later, in the nineties, I see ties with Auto Beaurex/Stellar and Dome/Hayashi Racing. It's all very confusing!

[PS30-SB]

Originally posted by fines
........July 27 in 1985 at Fuji, and it's very obviously the same man, driving a #32 "Leyton House EXA", whatever that is. He finished 13th and second to last.

That would be an HN12-model Nissan EXA ( based on the Pulsar ), and a one-make series for the EXA ran as support races in Japan during that year. 'Bottom of the Bill' as it were.....

I remember Akagi possibly driving a Leyton House sponsored Sunny in the 'TS Cup' saloon car race series too?
By the mid-Eighties, there seemed to be LH-sponsored cars in just about every four-wheeled race series in Japan......



Regarding 'Speed Star Racing' - this was indeed the race team backed and title-sponsored by Speed Star Wheel Co. It is quite complicated to follow because the company had it's own team, but acted as a main sponsor for differebt teams at other times. Like a lot of Japanese wheel-manufacturing companies during that period, they got into financial difficulties by over-trading. Some of these companies went bust several times over.....

[HistoryFan]

Who was principal of their own team?
I know that Speed Star sponsered many teams in Japan.

Thanks for the informations.

[Spaceframe]

Originally posted by Formula Once
Kenji Mimura (Maki, although I don't know if he actually owned the team).

I once read Howden Ganley's recount of his time at Maki (a the-worst-car-I-ever-drove thing in Motor Sport) - the two Japanese who hired him presented themselves as Mr. Tojo and Mr. Yamamoto (for those of you not interested in history it should be added that Tojo was prime minister of Japan from October 1941 until the end of WW II while Yamamoto was the supreme commander of the Japanese fleet until his plane was ambushed by a squadron of US P-38 Lightnings in 1944....).

The two gentlemen claimed they were fronting up for Honda...

[km1164]

Middlebridge Racing
i met a historic race car prep shop owner who told me he was 1 half of the name middle bridge translated from his japanese name to english his friend was the other half and they " owned" Brabham
i have no reason to doubt him as he does have a bt58 or 9 in the shed

Kojima
this race team was the Kojima engineering company running cars bought from march etc before they built their own F2 and F1 cars in the mid to late 70`s

[HistoryFan]

Originally posted by HistoryFan
Wataru Ohashi (Footwork)

I heard that also Kazuo Ito was involved in Footwork. In grandprix.com I've read that Kazuo Ito was shareholder at Larrousse? So what's right and has anyone more details about him?

[Gert]

Originally posted by HistoryFan
I heard that also Kazuo Ito was involved in Footwork. In grandprix.com I've read that Kazuo Ito was shareholder at Larrousse? So what's right and has anyone more details about him?

I remember reading (in Sport-Auto or Auto-Hebdo?) that Larrousse found a new Japanese partner. IIRC this partner had a company called Espo or Epso (the name resembeled Epson, but that was not it).

The partnership didn't last very long as the Japanese guy ran into difficulties although the sponsor name remained on the cars for a while.

[Gert]

Central 20 Racing Team = Haruhito Yanagida ?

(http://www.zilvia.ne...tml#post1889560)

[y44na710]

Hello.
Though I know...

Maki Engineering: Kenji Mimura
Kojima Engineering: Matsuhisa Kojima
Heroes Racing: Hiromu Tanaka　(Team owner, 1976 Japan GP Tyrrell)
Middlebridge Racing: Kouji Nakauchi (Businessman, owned 1987 Benetton Customer and 1990-92 Brabham)
Espo Larrousse: Kazuo Ito (Real estate industry, shareholder)
Subaru Coloni: Yoshio Takaoka (Principal of Subaru Tecnica Europa, shareholder)
Leyton House: Akira Akagi (Real estate industry, team owner)
Footwork: Wataru Ohashi (Trucking business, team owner)
Tom's Great Britain: Hiroshi Fushida
Ikuzawa: Tetsu Ikuzawa
Dome: Minoru Hayashi
Super-Aguri: Aguri Suzuki and Fumio Akita


Fumio Akita: Fumio Akita presided over the activity for the establishment of the team in Japan and the business on the money side in Super-Aguri.
Koh Goth: Koh Gotoh is a businessman. It seems that it was a level of big sponsor to the end and no joint owner though he invested in Pacific. Moreover, it seems that the relation to Gotoh disappeared at the same time as Pacific's withdrawing from F1.
Daemon Kogure: Japanese Rock Artist (聖飢魔II), sponsor of 1992 Brabham

Central 20 Racing Team = Haruhito Yanagida ?

(http://www.zilvia.ne...tml#post1889560)

Yes. Yanagida founded Central 20.

[HistoryFan]

Thank you!

[HistoryFan]

Espo Larrousse: Kazuo Ito (Real estate industry, shareholder)

Was he involved in other motorsport projects? Has he a career in motorsport in addition to the engagement at Larrousse?

[y44na710]

Was he involved in other motorsport projects? Has he a career in motorsport in addition to the engagement at Larrousse?

According to this URL
http://www.officej1....abukuzeni-3.htm
Ito established the company that manufactured the machine tool in around 1970.
Ito seemed to belong to SCCN(Sports Car Club of Nissan), and to have participated in the race in Japan the several years later. Ito seems to have stopped the race activity by generating oil crisis.
Besides, the description concerning motorsport was not found on WEB.

[HistoryFan]

Thank you!