Kaoru Hoshino
Kaoru Hoshino (Japanese星野 薫, Kaoru Hoshino, born September 21, 1947) is a former Japanese racing driver.
Career
Kaoru Hoshino played in his long racing career almost exclusively sports car and GT races. He drove his first race in the late 1970s in the Japanese sports car scene. In the current publications there is a well-known first race in 1979; Hoshino started with his two teammates and countrymen Masakazu Nakamura and Shimizu Kouichirou the 500-mile race at Fuji, a scoring run of the Japanese Fuji Long Distance Series, and reached the 14th position in the final classification.
It was followed by engagements in Japanese Sports Car Championship and its annual launch at the 1000 km race at Suzuka also various appearances in the World Sportscar Championship. In 1982, he became popular with his third overall in the Japanese Touring Car Championship 1985 factory driver at Toyota and Japan.
For racing events outside of Japan he was as good as: exceptions were the 24 - hour race at Le Mans and Spa. At Le Mans he was for the Toyota team between 1985 and 1989 four times at the start. 1985 and 1988, he came Gesamtzwölfter. For the other two races he fell out prematurely due to a technical defect or an accident. At Spa, the best placement was a rank twelfth in 1991.
The highlight of his career he reached late, after nearly 20 years of active racing. In 1995 he won the overall classification of Class 2 of the Japanese GT Championship. After the 1999 season, he played only three times in the 1000 km race at Suzuka in 2004 and came back for good.