Keiichi Tsuchiya

Keiichi Tsuchiya ( Tsuchiya Kei'ichi土屋 圭 市; born January 30, 1956 in Tomi Nagano ) is a Japanese professional race driver.

Because of his unconventional drifts Tsuchiya is known as the Drift King or Dorikin (ドリキン) and helped the drift sports world to an unprecedented popularity. Furthermore Tsuchiya is also known for driving on so-called Touge routes. The vehicle most commonly used of him is a Toyota AE86 Sprinter Trueno ( known in Japan as " Hachi - Roku ", meaning " eight six " means ). A video called " Pluspy " documents the driving Tsuchiya 's of Touge passes with his AE86.

Biography

Tsuchiya started his career in 1977 in Fuji Freshman series. In contrast to the majority of drivers who had either large families or motorsport background, Tsuchiya learned his driving skills on public roads and was fast becoming a street racing legend.

Racing career

National Championships

He raced in the Japanese Formula 3 Championship and in the Japanese Touring Car Championship. Initially a Ford Sierra Cosworth driving, he later switched to a Nissan Skyline GT -R and thus took on the group -A championship part. In addition, he was driving a Honda Civic in the Super Touring Car Championship.

Le Mans

In 1995 Tsuchiya win his class in a Honda NSX and drove out an eighth place overall. In 1999, he started in a Toyota GT -One. Despite involuntary Crashes his teammates Ukyo Katayama in the last hour of the race, the team could still retract the second place and the fastest lap of the race.

NASCAR

Tsuchiya started in the years 1995 to 1998, several NASCAR -compliant round and oval track racing, including the Suzuka Thunder 100, the Coca -Cola 500K at the Twin Ring Motegi as well as at the California Speedway.

Following the resignation

After retiring as an active racing driver Tsuchiya continued to get the racing and was instrumental in the founding and organization of the D1 Grand Prix, the first professional drift series in the world. Here he worked until December 2010 in the role of the judge since the beginning of the series in 1999. In addition, he was until 2005 Director of ARTA JGTC Team teams in the GT500 and GT300 class of the Japanese GT Championship, the Super GT today. Tsuchiya had until 2005 the chassis manufacturer Kei Office, which he has to thank for its distinctive green jumpsuit and the driver's helmet.

Tsuchiya is host and moderator in several video magazines, including Best Motoring, Hot Version, Video Option and Drift Tengoku. Topic are mostly Japanese vehicles and their tuning options, plus drift and the D1 Grand Prix series in general. In addition, he also worked on the two anime Initial D and Wangan Midnight, where it occurs partially self. Since 1995 Tsuchiya commented sporadically Formula 1 races for the Japanese station Fuji TV.

Tsuchiya has a cameo as a fisherman in the movie The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in the harbor, where the protagonist exerts drifting. He comments on the experiments with "カウンター ステア が 遅い だ な? " ( " The counter-steering is too late "). He was involved in the movie as a stunt coordinator and stuntman.

Le Mans results

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