Hiroshi Aoyama

Aoyama 2009

Aoyama 2007 on KTM

Aoyama 2009 on Honda at the Japanese Grand Prix

Hiroshi Aoyama ( Japanese 青山 博 一 , Aoyama Hiroshi ; born October 25, 1981 in Ichihara ) is a Japanese motorcycle racer .

In the 2009 season he became world champion in the 250 cm³ class and thus the last quarter-liter world champion in history. His younger brother Shūhei Aoyama is also a motorcycle racer.

Career

Hiroshi Aoyama first sat on a motorcycle when he was five years old. At that time his father accompanied him on a pocket bike race track. Since then, motorcycles have been the focus of his life. At the age of 14 he became part of Okegawa Zyuku, where he learned a lot about motorcycles and had a lot of experience with mini bikes, motocross and the like. At the age of 18, he joined the Harc-Pro team and took part in the Japanese 250 cc championship. Since his debut in the motorcycle world championship he was eighth in the Pacific Grand Prix motorcycle world championship 2000 on a Honda .

From 2001 to 2003 he started as a wildcard pilot in both of the World Cup races held in Japan. In 2003 he finished second at the Japanese Grand Prix in Suzuka and won the title in the 250 cc class of the Japanese championship . This first success enabled him to enter the international scene and so he started in the seasons 2004 and 2005 as the first "Scholarship Rider" as a permanent driver for the Telefónica Movistar Honda 250 team alongside the Spaniard Dani Pedrosa , who in won the world title these two years . In the first year he got two third places and sixth place in the overall classification. In 2005 Hiroshi Aoyama won his first race at the Japanese Grand Prix, and with a total of three podium finishes, he was fourth in the World Championship this year.

For the 2006 season, Aoyama switched to the Austrian Red Bull KTM factory team within the 250 cm³ class . He won the Grand Prix in Turkey and Japan, celebrated a total of seven podium finishes and repeated fourth place overall from the previous year. In 2007 the Japanese competed on a KTM . After a mediocre start to the season, he achieved his first win of the season at the German Grand Prix at the Sachsenring . Another victory followed in the Malaysia race . With 160 points, Hiroshi Aoyama finished sixth overall this season. In 2008 Hiroshi Aoyama started in the 250cc class for KTM and finished seventh in the world championship with two second places as the best results.

After KTM withdrew from the quarter liter world championship at the end of the 2008 season, Aoyama switched to the Italian Scot Honda team in 2009 , where he started alongside the Italian Raffaele De Rosa . The Japanese finished all 17 races of the season in the top eight, celebrated four wins and a total of seven podiums. He was able to celebrate winning the 250 cc World Championship title at the last race of the season, the Valencia Grand Prix , 22 points ahead of the Spanish Aprilia driver Héctor Barberá . Hiroshi Aoyama became the last world champion in the history of the quarter liter class since 1949 , as this was replaced by the Moto2 category from 2010 .

In the 2010 season , Hiroshi Aoyama competed in the MotoGP class for the Interwetten Honda MotoGP team on a Honda RC212V . On the weekend of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone , however, he broke his 12th thoracic vertebra during warm-up on the Sunday before the race and had to sit out six races. He celebrated his return at the Indianapolis Grand Prix , just ten weeks after the serious accident.

In his 133 starts in the motorcycle world championship , Hiroshi Aoyama achieved nine wins , 27 podium places, eight pole positions and eleven fastest race laps .

statistics

successes

• 2003 - Japanese 250cc champion on a Honda
• 2009 - 250 cc world champion on a Honda
• 9 Grand Prix victories

In the motorcycle world championship

(Status: end of season 2017)

season	class	motorcycle	run	Victories	Podiums	Poles	Points	Result
2000	250 cc	Honda NSR 250	1	-	-	-	8th	28.
2001	250 cc	Honda	2	-	-	-	3	28.
2002	250 cc	Honda	2	-	-	-	9	27.
2003	250 cc	Honda	2	-	1	1	31	15th
2004	250 cc	Honda	16	-	2	-	128	6th
2005	250 cc	Honda	16	1	4th	2	180	4th
2006	250 cc	KTM	16	2	7th	1	193	4th
2007	250 cc	KTM	17th	2	4th	1	160	6th
2008	250 cc	KTM	16	-	2	1	139	7th
2009	250 cc	Honda	16	4th	7th	2	261	World Champion
2010	MotoGP	Honda RC212V	12	-	-	-	53	15th
2011	MotoGP	Honda RC212V	17th	-	-	-	98	10.
2012	MotoGP	BQR	1	-	-	-	3	25th
2013	MotoGP	FTR	16	-	-	-	13	20th
2014	MotoGP	Honda RCV1000R	18th	-	-	-	68	14th
2015	MotoGP	Honda RC213V	3	-	-	-	5	25th
2016	MotoGP	Honda RC213V	2	-	-	-	1	25th
2017	MotoGP	Honda RC213V	1	-	-	-	-	30th
total			173	9	27	8th	1353

In the Superbike World Championship

season	motorcycle	run	Victories	Podiums	Poles	Points	Result
2012	Honda	26th	-	-	-	61.5	18th
total		26th	-	-	-	61.5

Web links

Commons : Hiroshi Aoyama  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website (English, Japanese)
• Hiroshi Aoyama on the official website of the Motorcycle World Championship (English).