Toranosuke Takagi, known simply as Tora Takagi (高木 虎之介; born 12 February 1974) is a Japanese former racing driver. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Toranosuke (Tora) Takagi’s father was a touring car driver and Tora himself started racing in karts in the early 1980s. He competed in his first championship kart race in 1987 and went on to win several All Japan National Kart A2 series races, and was Champion in 1989 and 1990 and second in 1991’s FA National Championship.
He moved away from karts to race in Formula Toyota in 1992, winning two races during that season and in the following year began competing in All Japan Formula Three.
After his racing with the TOM’s Toyota team attracted the attention of Satoru Nakajima, he made his Japanese F3000 debut for Nakajima Planning. 1995 saw him take three victories and finish second to Toshio Suzuki, and he continued with them in the new Formula Nippon and won three races during the next two seasons.
He was with the team until Tyrrell chose him as their F1 test driver in 1997 and then graduated to an F1 race seat with them for 1998. He finished in the top ten twice, with ninth place finishes at Silverstone and Monza.
He moved on to race with Arrows F1 and there were two more top ten finishes, including a career-best seventh at Melbourne, though he left Formula One at the end of 1999.
In 2000, he joined Nakajima Racing’s Formula Nippon team and there were eight victories in ten races, at that time the most dominant performance ever by a driver in the series. He moved into CART for the Walker Racing team in 2001 and 2002, finishing in the top ten three times in 2001, including a career-best fourth at Houston. In 2002 there were seven top ten placings plus a repeat fourth best place, this time at Chicago. During 2002, Tora also tested Toyota’s F1 car at Paul Ricard.
Tora transferred to the Indy Racing League and raced for Mo Nunn Racing, and after qualifying seventh and finishing fifth at the Indy500, he received the Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year award.
The following season was a disappointing one and after it he returned to Japan to compete in Formula Nippon once again in 2005. He had a part ownership of the Cerumo team and he and co-driver Yuji Tachikawa won the 300Km Suzuka race plus the Fuji 300Km and Fuji 500Km races. 2006 saw a switch to a Lexus SC430 and they won a 300Km Sugo race plus took a podium at Motegi while the following year saw several fourth place finishes, at Fuji, Sepang and Motegi. Tora continued with the Lexus for 2008 but this time was racing as Toyota Team Sard and the best results were sixth at Sugo and fifth at Fuji with Andre Couto.
