...and second in 2018
with Dallara SF14First SF crown with
Team Mugen came
aboard Swift in 2013...25 JULY 2019 AUTOSPORT.COM 25INTERVIEW NAOKI YAMAMOTOt the age of 31 he’s one of the most formidable
racing drivers in the world, he’s been acclaimed
by a Formula 1 world champion as somebody
who should be racing at the very top level of
the sport, he’s the subject of speculation that
he could be a future Red Bull or Toro Rosso F1 driver, yet he’s
rarely competed in a car outside Japan – and never outside Asia.
By the end of 2018, which yielded dual titles in Super Formula
and, with Jenson Button, in Super GT – and a surprise visit as
a guest of Red Bull to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – suddenly
everyone wanted to know more about Naoki Yamamoto. And
the funny thing is, he might well not have still been a racing
driver at all by this time of his life, for this ardent perfectionist
twice came close to quitting the sport as a young man.
The first was in 2006, at the age of 17. Following two seasons of
karting in Europe he enrolled at Honda’s Suzuka Racing School in
a bid to win its coveted scholarship to get onto the single-seater
ladder. “My goal was to race formula cars in Europe,” he recalls,
“but thinking of the future I think it was important to enlist in
the racing school to represent Honda – to join the ‘rail’ of Honda.
When I was in Europe, Mr Aguri Suzuki was supporting me, but
it was not easy to carry on my career overseas. So we decided
that if I join the Suzuka Racing School, and if I did not succeed,
I would stop racing. That would be it for me.”
Now let’s go forward six years, to 2012, by which time
Yamamoto was 23. In 2010 he had contested his rookie season
in Formula Nippon (which was renamed ‘Super Formula’ in 2013)
with Nakajima Racing, before being shuffled across to Team
Mugen for 2011. The Mugen team was a new one in the series,
with an inexperienced driver, and running a solo car – so no
established team-mate for Yamamoto to learn from. “For my lack
of experience I was very happy to have my rookie year with the
Nakajima team – that was very good for me,” he says. “But once
I moved to Mugen... they started in 2011, so they had no data
A
THE STAR OF THE EAST
Naoki Yamamoto has become such a force in Japanese motorsport that he’s now
linked to F1. But who is he, and what’s his story? We sat down with him to find out
MARCUS SIMMONS(^) PHOTOGRAPHY ISHIHARA
and we had to do development. They only had one car. There
was so much to do, and the first year was really tough for us.
“So for 2013 I decided this was my last chance and I had to
do it now. The engineer Mr Abe [Kazuya Abe] that I worked
with in my first year at Nakajima came and joined me at Mugen.
I called Abe-san and I said, ‘If you don’t join me for us to win the
championship together, I’ll quit racing’. So he joined Mugen and
thanks to that I’m still here! That was a big turning point for me.”
Such remarkable self-imposed pressure for one so young...
And, indeed, Yamamoto did win that 2013 series, the last in
which the American-built Swift FN09 was used before the
Dallara SF14 was introduced for the following season. But that
self-examination fits with the personality of Yamamoto.
He’s known in the paddock for being serious, articulate and
forcefully expressing his views and, although what he says makes
sense, that means he’s not everyone’s cup of sake – certainly
compared to, say, Kamui Kobayashi, who has the media in fits
of giggles with his comically delivered one-liners. Yamamoto’s
nickname among Japanese motorsport insiders is ‘Manager’, and
his desire for everything to be just so is such that he prefers this
interview to be conducted via Super Formula’s Portuguese-born
translator Sonia Ito, in case he can’t express himself properly.
When Ito needs to rush off before the end of the chat to help
the Europeans at a drivers’ briefing, Yamamoto reveals a
hitherto-hidden perfectly acceptable ability to speak English.
With his 2013 title in the bag, Yamamoto’s fortunes dipped
with the introduction of the new two-litre, turbocharged
four-cylinder powerplants introduced in 2014 to replace the old
3.4-litre V8s. “The Honda didn’t have enough speed,” he says.
“They were struggling with a lot of troubles compared to Toyota,
and we had really tough times until last year.” Indeed, Yamamoto
was top Honda driver in 2014, despite being ninth in the
standings; ditto 2015, when he was fifth. In 2016 he was seventh,
second Honda driver behind Stoffel Vandoorne, and in 2017 he