Yōjirō Terada

Yōjirō Terada in the Dome S101 at the 2007 Le Mans 24-hour race

Yōjirō Terada ( Japanese 寺 田 陽 次郎 , Terada Yōjirō ; born March 26, 1947 in Kobe ) is a former Japanese automobile racing driver .

Career

Terada was a works driver at Mazda from the late 1970s and stayed with the racing department of the Japanese brand as long as it ran its sports car program until 1992. He drove in the World Sports Car Championship , the Japanese Sports Prototype Championship and in many major international sports car races. He achieved several class wins, such as 1979 and 1982 on a Mazda RX-7 at the Daytona 24-hour race .

In the late 2000s, the bald Japanese racing driver was one of the most sought-after interviewees at the Le Mans 24-hour race . In 2008 Terada contested his 29th Le Mans race. To this day, however, he has not achieved his big goal of overtaking and overtaking Henri Pescarolo - who holds the record at Le Mans starts with 33 participations. Terada never made it to the top three podium in the overall standings at Le Mans, but achieved a total of four class wins in 1983 , 1988 , 1990 and 1996 .

Terada runs an Autoexe tuning company in Tokyo that specializes in upgrading Mazda vehicles.

statistics

Le Mans results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1974	Mazda Automotive	Sigma MC74	Yasuhiro Okamoto	Harakuni Takahashi	not classified
1981	Mazdaspeed	Mazda RX-7	Hiroshi Fushida	Win Percy	failure	drive shaft
1982	Mazdaspeed	Mazda RX-7	Takashi Yorino	Allan Moffat	Rank 14
1983	Mazdaspeed	Mazda 717C	Takashi Yorino	Yoshimi Katayama	Rank 12 and class win
1984	Mazdaspeed	Mazda 727C	Takashi Yorino	Pierre Dieudonné	Rank 20
1985	Mazdaspeed	Mazda 737C	Takashi Yorino	Yoshimi Katayama	Rank 24
1986	Mazdaspeed	Mazda 757	Takashi Yorino	Yoshimi Katayama	failure	Power transmission
1987	Mazdaspeed	Mazda 757	Takashi Yorino	Yoshimi Katayama	failure	Engine failure
1988	Mazdaspeed	Mazda 757	Dave Kennedy	Pierre Dieudonné	15th place and class win
1989	Mazdaspeed	Mazda 767	Marc Duez	Volker Weidler	Rank 12
1990	Mazdaspeed	Mazda 767B	Takashi Yorino	Yoshimi Katayama	Rank 20 and class win
1991	Mazdaspeed	Mazda 787	Takashi Yorino	Pierre Dieudonné	Rank 8
1992	Mazdaspeed	Mazda MXR-01	Takashi Yorino	Maurizio Sandro Sala	failure	accident
1993	Lotus sport	Lotus Esprit S300	Peter Hardman	Thorkild Thyrring	failure	Cylinder overheated
1994	Team Artnature	Mazda RX-7 GTO	Franck Fréon	Pierre de Thoisy	Rank 15
1995	DTR with Mazdaspeed	Kudzu DG-3	Franck Fréon	Jim Downing	Rank 7
1996	Mazdaspeed	Kudzu DLM	Franck Fréon	Jim Downing	Rank 25 and class win
1997	DTR with Mazdaspeed	Kudzu DLM4	Franck Fréon	Jim Downing	Rank 17
1998	Courage Compétition	Courage C41	Franck Fréon	Olivier Thévenin	Rank 16
1999	Autoexe Motorsport	Autoexe LMP99	Franck Fréon	Robin Donovan	failure	Engine failure
2000	Rachel Welter	WR LMP	Richard Balandras	Sylvain Boulay	Rank 26
2001	Gérard Welter	WR LMP01	Stéphane Daoudi	Jean-René de Fournoux	Rank 19
2002	Autoexe Motorsport	Autoexe LMP-02	John Fergus	Jim Downing	failure	Gearbox damage
2003	Rachel Welter	WR LMP01	Oliver Porta	Gavin Pickering	not classified
2004	Rachel Welter	WR LM2001	Oliver Porta	Patrice Roussel	Rank 26
2005	Rachel Welter	WR LMP04	William Binnie	Patrice Roussel	not classified	Fire
2006	Binnie Motorsports	Lola B05 / 42	William Binnie	Allen Timpany	Rank 13
2007	T2M motorsport	Dome S101.5	Robin Longechal	Yutaka Yamagishi	failure	Motor overheated
2008	Terramos	Courage LC70	Hiroki Kato	Kazuho Takashi	not classified

Sebring results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1998	Downing Atlanta	Kudzu DLM	Jim Pace	Jim Downing	failure	Engine failure
1999	Autoexe Motorsports	Autoexe LMP99	Franck Fréon		Rank 26
2002	Autoexe Motorsport	Autoexe LMP-02	John Fergus	Jim Downing	Rank 25

Web links

Commons : Yōjirō Terada  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official Homepage (Japanese)
• Information on racingsportscars.com (English)
• Information on driverdb.com (English)