Seiji Ara

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Seiji Ara 2008

Seiji Ara ( Japanese 荒 聖 治 , Ara Seiji ; born May 5, 1974 in Chiba Prefecture ) is a Japanese racing car driver .

Career

Seiji Ara has been one of the most famous motorsport drivers in Japan since winning the Le Mans 24 Hours . The endurance race in France is extremely popular in the land of the rising sun and has drawn manufacturers and drivers from Japan to Europe for years. In 2004 Audi decided not to compete at Le Mans as a works team in order to give the customer teams the chance of overall victory. One of these customer teams was the Japanese team Goh . As a partner of Tom Kristensen and Rinaldo Capello , Ara celebrated his greatest success in motorsport to date with the Audi R8 .

Ara did not begin his career uncommon in karting , changed mid-1990s in the United States to in the Barber Dodge series, a single-seater to go -Nachwuchsformel at the start. After returning to Japan and two seasons in the Japanese Formula 3 Championship , Ara turned to the sports car scene. He has been driving regularly in the GT championship of Japan since 2001 and is one of the top drivers there. There were also sporadic appearances in the American Le Mans Series . In 2007 Ara tried again to gain a foothold in Formula Nippon , the best Japanese monoposto series, in which he had already competed in several races in 2001 and 2002.

statistics

Le Mans results

year team vehicle Teammate Teammate placement Failure reason
2001 FranceFrance Viper Team ORECA Chrysler LMP JapanJapan Masahiko Kondo PortugalPortugal Ni Amorim failure engine
2002 JapanJapan Audi Sport Japan Team Goh Audi R8 JapanJapan Hiroki Kato FranceFrance Yannick Dalmas Rank 7
2003 JapanJapan Audi Sport Japan Team Goh Audi R8 DenmarkDenmark Jan Magnussen GermanyGermany Marco Werner Rank 4
2004 JapanJapan Audi Sport Japan Team Goh Audi R8 DenmarkDenmark Tom Kristensen ItalyItaly Rinaldo Capello Overall victory
2005 JapanJapan Jim Gainer International Dome S101 JapanJapan Ryō Michigami JapanJapan Katsutomo Kaneishi failure transmission
2009 JapanJapan Navi Team Goh Porsche RS Spyder JapanJapan Keisuke Kunimoto GermanyGermany Sascha Maassen failure accident
2012 FranceFrance Pescarolo team Dome S102.5 FranceFrance Sébastien Bourdais FranceFrance Nicolas Minassian not classified

Web links

Commons : Seiji Ara  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Ara, Seiji
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 荒 聖 治 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese automobile racer
DATE OF BIRTH May 5th 1974
PLACE OF BIRTH Chiba prefecture