The Japanese motorsport world has lost one its greatest heroes: Kunimitsu Takahashi, the trailblazing 2-wheel and 4-wheel racing legend has passed away at the age of 82.
No matter who you ask: Kunimitsu Takahashi was a household name among fans of Japanese motorsport. There are many ways how to describe his accolades and achievements: A true trailblazer. A true legend. A Grand Prix winner. A team owner. A champion. A Le Mans champion. A Formula 1 driver. The first boss of Super GT. The Father of Drift. But most importantly: He was a person, who shaped Japanese motorsport into what it is today.
Kunimitsu Takahashi’s career began in 1958 when he emerged victorious in the All-Japan Motorcycle Endurance race around Mount Asama on a 350cc machine. A year later, he repeated his feat, but this time with a 500cc machine. Delighted by his talent, he got to join the Honda Speed Club (HSC) by Honda R&D Co., Ltd. and set out to compete internationally. Just a year later in 1961, Takahashi crowned himself the first Japanese rider to win a World Grand Prix race in the West German Grand Prix in Hockenheim on a 250cc machine. Three more victories and a total of 14 podiums would follow during his career, before he switched to car racing in 1965 after suffering a life-threatening injury at the 1962 Isle of Man TT race.
Among his friends and fans also known as „Kuni-san“, he signed a contract with Nissan and their works team Oppama Works, emerging as one of the marque’s best sports car drivers. He quickly showed that he wasn’t just fast on two-wheels by taking a third-place finish at the innaugural Suzuka 1000km in 1966 as well as a second-place finish in the 1967 Japan Grand Prix at Fuji Speedway. During the 1960s, Takahashi would drive a wide range of cars, from prototypes such as the legendary R380 to modified production models. When Nissan’s first-generation Nissan Skyline 2000 GT-R claimed its 50th consecutive win in 1972, Takahashi was right there, piloting the „Hakosuka“ in the wet Fuji 300km race. Together with his driver colleagues Moto Kitano and Motoharu Kurosawa, he was known as the „The Sanbagarasu of Oppama Works“: „The Triumvirate of Oppama Works“.
However, despite actively contributing to milestone victories and even showing his knack for endurance racing by winning the 1970 Fuji 1000km, the 1971 Race de Nippon 6 Hours of Fuji as well as the 1973 Suzuka 1000km, Takahashi was also named the „Uncrowned Emperor“ among the fans and pundits alike. This was due to his bad luck in some of the nation’s biggest races, where he would often qualify on pole position and showcase why he was one, if not the best driver in the field, but ultimately held back because of machine troubles. Kuni-san drove himself into the hearts of the fans, not just with his sheer speed, but also because of his unique driving technique. He would often drift with all four wheels through the corners – a technique that would later get popularised by „Drift King“ Keiichi Tsuchiya, leading to its own sport and giving Kunimitsu Takahshi the title „The Father of Drift“.
In 1975, Takahashi made his debut in single-seeter racing, entering the All-Japan Formula 2000 Championship – the predecessor of today’s Super Formula. In 1976, he finished runner-up behind Kazuyoshi Hoshino. However, it was the opening round on March 6 at Suzuka, that showed his true devotion to the sport and his fellow race drivers, when Kenichi Takeshita crashed violently into the guardrail on the backstraight and got stuck with two laps to go. Despite leading the race, Takahashi didn’t think twice and immediately stopped at the crash site to come to the rescue of Takeshita. Other drivers were inspired by this and came to help too. The race got ultimately red flagged and the ranking before the stoppage was used as the result, handing Takahashi the first win of the season. However, it was his devotion and selfishness to help another driver in need that lead to high praise by the other pilots, the organizers and fans alike. Kuni-san’s arguably biggest success in top formula racing happened in the 1978 JAF Grand Prix, when he fended off the likes of Riccardo Patrese, Derek Warwick and René Arnoux to win said crown jewel event to finish the All-Japan Formula 2 season. The somewhat unfair moniker of the „Uncrowned Emperor“ was finally gone. Just a year prior, he made his only Formula 1 start at the Japanese Grand Prix, driving a privateer Tyrrel 007 by Meiritsu Racing Team to a 9th-place finish in a race that unfortunately got overshadowed by the tragic deaths of marshal Kengo Yuasa and photographer Kazuhiro Ohashi.
Kunimitsu Takahashi’s single-seater career spanned from 1975 to 1994 and saw him compete in F2000, F2 and F3000 – all eras that would ultimately lead to Formula Nippon in 1996 and Super Formula in 2013. In total, he won four races and climbed onto the podium 17 times. In October 1994 he showed that age is just a number, when he achieved his last podium finish at Fuji Speedway at the age of 54. Being a fixture of Japan’s top formula categories, Takahashi would find his biggest success in the All-Japan Endurance Championship / All-Japan Sports Prototype Championship (JSPC) from 1983 to 1989. At the height of the Group C prototype era, he won three consecutive titles piloting Nova Engineering’s Advan-branded Porsche 956 and 962C. In 1989, he added a fourth title. On top of his dominance in the JSPC, Kuni-san also took three more victories in the 1984, 1985 and 1989 Suzuka 1000km as well as another triumph at the 1986 Fuji 1000km – two of Japan’s biggest endurance races that ultimately metamorphosed into today’s Suzuka 10 Hours and WEC’s Fuji 6 Hours. Alongside all of this, Takahashi competed in Group A touring car racing with a Mitsubihsi Starion, picking up three victories and a total of six podium finishes in the All-Japan Touring Car Championship from 1986 to 1988.
His national Group C achievements unsurprisngly lead Kunimitsu Takahashi to the grandest sports car stage of them all: the 24 Hours of Le Mans. First driving for Kremer Racing in their Porsche 962C and 962CK models from 1986 to 1990, he would only finish in the top ten once, taking a 9th-place finish alongside fellow countryman Hideki Okada in the 1988 running of the event. During the other years, he unfortunatley wouldn’t see the chequered flag, but thankfully walked away from a fiery incident with mere hours to go in the 1989 race. In 1992, Team Kunimitsu was formed to enter the All-Japan Touring Car Championship. He hired his good friend and greatest admirer Keiichi Tsuchiya to field the powerful R32 Nissan Skyline GT-R. In 1994, they both would take Team Kunimitsu to the newly formed All-Japan GT Championship (JGTC) – the forerunner of today’s Super GT. The duo took their first victory of the season at Sportsland SUGO driving a Porsche 911 RSR.
The same year, Takahashi’s career would come full circle, when he partnered with Honda to return to Le Mans with a Honda NSX GT2 by Kremer Racing. Together with Keiichi Tsuchiya and Akira Iida they formed an all-Japan lineup that would see the checkquered flag in the car’s debut. Their biggest triumph would happen a year later. They went to Le Mans as the only LMGT2-spec Honda NSX GT2 in the field. A last-minute mechanical issue caused them to start the race six laps down in the pits. But they didn’t come all the way to France to give up that easily. Instead, they slowly but surely chipped away at the deficit, even defiying the treacherous raining conditions into the night, to eventually steal away the lead from the Callaway Corvettes in the morning hours. It wasn’t just the first victory for Honda as a manufacturer, it was also the first win for Takahashi, Tsuchiya and Iida on a landmark day that saw Masanori Sekiya emerge as Japan’s first overall winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. For this achievement, Kunimitsu Takahashi got inducted into the 24 Hours of Le Mans Hall of Fame in 2013. The trio would return to the Sarthe together one more time in 1996, finishing third in the LMGT2 class. This is noteable, as it was the first time that Stanley Electric’s vehicle lights brand Raybrig was sponsoring Kunimitu’s machine – a partnership that continues to this day in Super GT.
Together with Team Kunimitsu, Honda established its first GT500 factory programme in the JGTC. At first, the car was developed by Mooncraft and the team’s blue Raybrig NSX-GT, which debuted in 1997, quickly became one of the most recognizeable and iconic designs in all of JGTC / Super GT. In 1998, Takahashi took Honda’s only third victory in the series at the Miné Circuit. At the age of 59, Kuni-san took his final win in the Fuji 500km Golden Week round before ending his career at the end of the season. He would later participate in several smaller events such as the 2012 Fuji Sprint Cup Legend Cup, where he finished second behind Masanori Sekiya at the age of 72. In 2019, during the MotoGP event at Assen in the Netherlands, Kuni-san would climb one last time onto his legendary motorcycle to celebrate Honda’s 60th anniversary of Grand Prix racing by doing one final lap of honor. A memorable and goosebumps-inducing moment.
After bowing out of active competition, Kunimitsu Takahashi didn’t just focus on managing his own team. He also continued to serve as chairman of the GT Association (GTA), leading both JGTC since its inception in 1993 and Super GT since the rebranding in 2005 before passing the role to Masaaki Bandoh in 2007. He also served as a director of the Japan Automobile Federation (JAF) and Motorcycle Federation of Japan (MJF). Despite multiple race wins, the elusive GT500 title always eluded Kuni-san. In 2018, the year former Formula 1 champion Jenson Button joined the team to partner Naoki Yamamoto, the long wait was finally over, when the team prevailed in a hard fought battle against Toyota’s TOM’s squad to crown themselves GT500 champions for the very first time – Honda’s first title since 2010. Naoki Yamamoto would lead Team Kunimitsu to their second title in only three years in 2020 together with new teammate Tadasuke Makino after Button’s departure from the series at the end of the 2019 season in what shaped up to be one of the most dramatic finishes to a Super GT season ever. In 2021, Yamamoto was en route to successfully defend his title before getting crashed out of contention by fellow Honda protégé and GT300 driver Ren Sato, causing another dramatic end to the season.
For his outstanding contribution to the promotion of sports in Japan, Kunimitsu Takahashi was honored by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, Sports, and Technology (MEXT). He was the first person from the world of auto racing to receive said honor and the fourth motorcycle rider after Daijiro Kato, Hiroshi Aoyama and Takahisa Fujinami. At the ceremony held in Tokyo in July of 2020, he reminiscent how lucky he was to meet Honda founder Soichiro Honda, who gave him the opportunity to participate on the world stage. Humble as ever he said: „In motorsports, whether it is two-wheel or four-wheel, results can’t be achieved without the combined efforts of many people. It’s thanks to all those people that I have been able to spend more than 60 years of my life involved in racing. I’m honored beyond words.“
At the age of 82, Kunimitsu Takahashi has raced his final race. The world of Japanese motorsport wouldn’t be the same without his many contributions. The world of racing has lost a true legend. A true trailblazer. A man, who contributed his life to two-wheel and four-wheel motorsports, inspiring many others to follow. In 1993, motorsport journalist Shigeharu Kumakura highly praised Kunimitsu’s ability on TV commentary for the Inter TEC touring car race at Fuji Speedway, by simply saying: „Kunimitsu Takahashi is a genius.“ My most heartfelt condolences go out to Takahashi’s family, all of his friends and of course the entire Team Kunimitsu staff. Race in peace, Kuni-san.
Copyright Photos: Honda, Nissan, Mobilityland, GTA, MEXT