Thursday, January 15, 2009

No. 72, Y. Taniguchi?

Yukinori Taniguchi recently entered the World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) during the last stages of the 2008 season, driving at Monza, Italy and Okayama, Japan. Taniguchi also competed in the Honda Exciting Cup One-Make Race 2008, Inner-Civic Series. He finished third in early November, during the final race, No. 7 at Fuji and seventh in overall series standings.

Check out the Hondas he has been piloting; the Repsol/AMS (JAS/N-Technology) CL7 and the Ings+1/Sergeant FD2:

Just a little bit of history behind Taniguchi; He founded the video game developer Yuke's in Osaka, in 1993 and supported Nobushige Kumakubo's Team Orange (Team Yuke's) in the D1 Grand Prix which lead to Yuke's development of the D1GP game series. As a driver, in 2005, he competed in Super Taikyu piloting a Nissan 350z alongside Tarzan Yamada and the pair became series' champions. Then, in 2007, he competed in the Japan Le Mans Challenge, won a race and finished runner-up in the season.

That's the real dream right there. At age 40, a successful businessman with a side job as a racing driver, currently for two separate Honda teams and a history in motorsports.

Photos courtesy of Taniguchi's blog: http://ameblo.jp/yuke72/

-Nick

2 comments:

Johnny Rumble said...

The CL7 looks much nice in my opinion. FD chassis are getting around too much for my tastes anymore. Too common.

3L said...

that shit is rowdy