Kunimitsu Takahashi (Shinjitai: 高橋 国光 Takahashi Kunimitsu, born Tokyo, 29 January 1940 – dead 16 March 2022) is a Japanese former professional Grand Prix motorcycle road racer, racing driver, and current owner and team manager of Team Kunimitsu in Super GT.
He is considered as the “father of drifting”. He was the chairman of the GT-Association, the organizers of the Super GT series, from 1993 to 2007. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Kunimitsu Takahashi is prominent figure in Japanese motorsport, and raced cars and rode GP motorbikes and is considered as the ‘father of drifting’.
He started racing motorbikes in 1958 and then in 1961, riding a 250 Honda at Hockenheim, he became the first Japanese rider to win a Grand Prix. He was fourth in that year’s 250 World Championship and fourth in 1962’s 125 world championship though unfortunately was seriously injured at the Isle of Man TT in 1962.
There would be extra victories in GP racing in France, Spain and the United States, and he then switched to car racing in 1965.
He competed in one F1 race, driving a Tyrrell at the 1977 Japanese GP, and finished ninth. He competed in the Japanese F3000 Championship between 1987 to 1992 plus competed in eight Le Mans races between 1986 and 1996, the highpoint being 1992 when his team’s Honda NSX won the GT2 Class and finished eighth overall.
He was also chairman of the GT Association (the Japanese Super GT series), from 1993 to 2007 and was inducted into the 24 Hours of Le Mans Hall of Fame in 2013.
Gallery F1 F2 and F3000 SC Other
Despite the advanced nature of the Prince design, the R380-II failed to take on the superior Porsche 906. The Germans had improved their fragile car to perfection, and took a hard earned victory from Nissan. With that, Nissan went on re-evaluate the performance potential of the R380-II. It was obvious they had to go back to the drawing board as something much faster was needed to compete for the top step of the podium once again as looks alone would not suffice.
Nissan’s management started the task of building a new sportscar to the former Prince engineering team, lead by visionary Shinichiro Sakurai. He understood the importance of breaking boundaries better than anyone, having been responsible for the success of the Prince R380. Up until that time, top level Japanese sports cars had taken the safe approach of 2L six-cylinder engines, but Sakurai wanted something much more.
So with this mindset, he went to investigate the Canadian American Challenge, which featured radical open top sportscars. Can Am had been steadily gaining ground for all over and the FIA Group 7 formula was at the top of the tree. Regulations were that the car had to have no roof and four wheels.
Previously, the Japan Grand Prix organisers had endorsed their own set of regulations limiting engine capacity to 2L and requiring all cars (including convertibles) to sport a fixed roof. Since then the event had gained global recognition, and the FIA had stepped in to govern it. Realizing this meant FIA Group 7 also applied in Japan, so therefore Sakurai went on to go about building a Group 7 race car.
This is where this Prototype came around with a lot of influences of Can-Am design.
Sakurai-san ordered his top engine experts to start work on a project the likes of which Japan had never seen before. Using the GR-8 straight six from the R380-II as a template, his men started work on an unprecedented 6L V12 in which he was positive that it would produce 600 bhp.
With his team addressing the engine issue, he focused on the rest of the new car. He knew he had to wait until the engine was ready to be able to design a chassis around it, so he took the R380-II as a starting point for his highly experimental ideas. The car’s sleek bodywork was formed into a more square and aggressive shape, employing a flattened rear section which abruptly ended. This shape was invented by Dr. Wunibold Kamm as a means of reducing drag, and was known as the Kamm-tail.
After studying the ground-breaking design of Jim Halls’s Chaparral 2E, he was moved by the American’s pioneering ideas, and moved to incorporate them in his own design but instead of a single large wing as found on the Chaparral cars, he went for two smaller wings mounted beside each other. During cornering the wings were independently operated by hydraulic struts mounted to the suspension. On the straights the system was dormant, and the wings laid flat.
During cornering however, the inside wing would raise up. This served to counteract the shift in the car’s center of gravity. As it cornered, weight shifted to the outside, lifting the inside wheels up and therefore loosing stability and grip. Having some much downforce from the raised wing allowed the car to stay flat and corner much faster.
Even though he had based his efforts around the open top Can Am class, he had no intention of dropping the coupe bodystyle. An open top car produced much more drag than a similar closed model.
His approach changed drastically when he received word that rivals Toyota were also building a Group 7 sportscar, which utilized the lighter open top format so they immediately made changes to the final stages of design. The rear section was further flattened, greatly increasing the efficiency of the wings.
This is where the open top R381 came into fruition, even with engine mishaps along the way, Nissan would take part in the 1968 Fuji Japan Grand Prix with three cars with Moto Kitano claiming victory!
all from FB Historic Japanese Racing Cars
Kunimitsu Takahashi Honoured By Japanese Government For Lifelong Sporting Achievements
Receives the Sportsperson of Merit Award
Kunimitsu Takahashi, the trailblazing 2-wheel and 4-wheel racing legend was presented with the Sportsperson of Merit Award from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, Sports, and Technology (MEXT) in a ceremony held in Tokyo on 27 July.
He is the first person from the world of auto racing to receive this award, and the fourth motorcycle rider to receive the honour after Daijiro Kato, Hiroshi Aoyama, and Takahisa Fujinami.
