Takuma
Sato

Takuma Sato was born in Tokyo in 1977. He took up karting at the age of nineteen and won the Japanese national title in 1997. With the backing of Honda he then moved to Europe. In British Formula 3 he finished third with Carlin in 2000, and in 2001 he won twelve of 26 races to become champion, the first Japanese driver to do so in the series. That year he also won the Macau Grand Prix and the Masters of Formula 3.

Sato made his Formula One debut with Jordan in 2002, at the Australian Grand Prix. At his home race in Suzuka he finished fifth. In 2003 he was a test driver for BAR and took over from Jacques Villeneuve for the Japanese Grand Prix, where he came sixth. He became a regular BAR race driver in 2004 and reached the podium at the United States Grand Prix, the first for a Japanese driver since Aguri Suzuki in 1990. His 34 points gave him eighth in the championship, the best placing by a Japanese driver in Formula One, and BAR ended second in the constructors' standings. In 2005 he scored points only once, finishing eighth in Hungary.

From 2006 to 2008 Sato drove for the new Super Aguri team, run by the former driver Aguri Suzuki. At the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix he finished sixth and passed Fernando Alonso on the way, a move that F1 Racing magazine named its overtake of the year. Super Aguri withdrew after the 2008 Spanish Grand Prix, which ended Sato's Formula One career after 90 starts. He took one podium and no wins.

In 2010 Sato moved to the IndyCar Series. In 2013 he won at Long Beach for A. J. Foyt, his first victory in the series. In 2017 he won the Indianapolis 500 for Andretti, the first Asian driver to do so. With Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing he won at Portland in 2018 and at Barber and Gateway in 2019, and he took a second Indianapolis 500 victory in 2020. In 2014 he also contested the first ever Formula E race in Beijing.

Source: Wikipedia, “Takuma Sato”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.