Tetsuya Harada
Tetsuya Harada (Japanese原田 哲 也, Tetsuya Harada; born June 14, 1970 in Chiba, Chiba Prefecture, Japan) is a former Japanese motorcycle racer.
Harada was world champion in the 250 cc class of the motorcycle world championship in 1993.
Career
Early years
Tetsuya Harada won in 1988, the Japanese 125 cc Junior Championship and in 1990 and 1991 respectively second in the Japanese 250 cc Championship behind Tadayuki Okada. In 1992, he won the title in this series. In these three years, Harada also took part in the 250 cc Grand Prix of Japan as part of the Motorcycle World Championship and was able to be there twice qualified for the front row and go into the points.
250 cc World Championship
His good performances procured Tetsuya Harada 1993, the chance to dispute his first 250 cc World Championship season for Yamaha. With four wins and 197 points, he won the world championship with only four points ahead of the Italians Loris Capirossi.
In the 1994 season Harada has long been plagued by a wrist injury and could with only one podium finish in seventh place overall. In 1995, he fought a long time with the Aprilia rider Max Biaggi for the World Championship title, but ultimately had to leave the Italians go first with one win and eight second places. In the season 1996 Yamaha Harada was inferior to the competition from Honda and Aprilia in terms of performance and the Japanese could only enter four podiums and occupy the eighth place overall at the end of the season.
This eventually led him to leave for the 1997 season Yamaha and hire at Aprilia. He could go twelve times this season in 15 races in the top five and win three races in the World Cup overall standings with 235 points, he finished third.
In the season 1998 Tetsuya Harada went along with the Italians Loris Capirossi and Valentino Rossi Aprilia factory team. The Japanese drove a five victories and led for a long time on the overall standings. Even at the last World Championship race in Argentina, he was a few hundred meters before the finish line in the lead and the world title already seemed to belong to him, as Loris Capirossi ansetzte to a daring overtaking maneuvers in a right curve and Harada shot off the track. The race was eventually won by Valentino Rossi, Capirossi took second place and was first in the overall standings. After the race, Harada and Capirossi protested was first disqualified, this in turn put his hand a protest, got right and eventually became world champion. Tetsuya Harada occupied by only the third World Cup ranking.
The 2001 season was Harada's last in the 250 cc class. After eight pole positions, three wins and a total of 13 podium finishes, he was finally behind compatriot Daijiro Katō with 273 points runner-up.
500 cc - and MotoGP
In 1999 Tetsuya Harada rode for Aprilia in the 500cc class. He started with five finishes among the top five in the first ten races and was able to drive at Paul Ricard and Donington Park podium. At the end of the season, he finished tenth overall. In the 2000 season he was with his Aprilia no longer competitive and could only finish in the top ten once. He then decided to switch back to the 250 cc class. In the 2002 season he moved to Pramac Honda team in the newly created MotoGP class and finished with 47 points 17th place in the World Cup overall standings. After this season Tetsuya Harada ended his active career.