The racing driver who turned drifting into a sport: Who is Keiichi Tsuchiya?
He is known as the Drift King for his nontraditional use of drifting in non-drifting racing events and his role in popularizing drifting as a motorsport. The drift king mentioned in the "Fast and Furious" Tokyo Race movie is this Japanese pilot.
Keiichi Tsuchiya is a Japanese racing driver born on Wednesday, January 30, 1956. The most important feature of the famous pilot, who started his professional career in 1994 with the Le Mans races and ended in 2000, is not that he took part in the Le Mans races, but that he was the person who gave birth to the sport of drifting. Nowadays, when it comes to drift, the first thing that comes to mind is sliding vehicles. The ancestor of that sport is Keiichi Tsuchiya. The drift king mentioned in the "Fast and Furious" Tokyo Race movie is this Japanese pilot.
Keiichi Tsuchiya (born January 30, 1956) is a Japanese professional race car driver. He is known as the Drift King for his nontraditional use of drifting in non-drifting racing events and his role in popularizing drifting as a motorsport. In professional racing, he is a two-time 24 Hours of Le Mans class winner and the 2001 All Japan GT Championship runner-up. He is also known for touge driving.
The famous pilot, who started his racing career in the Japanese Touring Car Championship races, was very impressed by the driving of Kunimitsu Takahashi, one of his strongest rivals here. Takahashi accomplishes this by sliding the vehicle at high speed to turn corners. This technique attracts Tsuchiya's attention. The famous pilot developed this technique in Japan's mountains full of sharp bends and gave birth to the sport of drifting. He is one of the best people in the world who does this sport.
It would not be right to remember the Japanese pilot only with drift and Le Mans. He also had a famous Nascar history. He took his first step into his Nascar career at the Suzuka track in 1999. Later, he took part in NASCAR races at two different tracks.
Keiichi Tsuchiya appeared as a fisherman in the 2003 movie Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift. Tsuchiya, who appeared in the documentary series Japanorama, also shot in 2007, played a stuntman in the famous Top Gear automobile program. The famous pilot has been working as a consultant in the Autobacs racing team since 2008.