We Love Japan. So, Why Don't We Love Japanese Drivers?
The "just a Honda pay driver" argument is tired — and problematic
The world loves Japan.
We love the country’s food: We shove sushi and sashimi down our throats with surprising efficiency and get embarrassingly drunk chugging sake by the bottle. College students survive solely off microwavable ramen packets and America’s suburbs offer a hibachi grill experience that you’ll be sure to regret the next day as the stomach cramps set in. We love Japan’s culture: Those copious amounts of fermented Japanese rice wine often inevitably lead to an equally cringe-worthy karaoke performance — something so intertwined with American culture that we’ve largely forgotten its roots.
Above all, we love Japanese cars. The nation’s Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) is one of those oddities that caters to not just the Tokyo Drift fanatic, but also the soccer mom. From Honda minivans to souped-up Mazdas, Japan exports some of the most reliable everyday vehicles, along with sports cars that are routinely ranked on top 10 lists.
That affinity for producing cars birthed a racing scene unlike any other. Despite occupying an area smaller than the state of California, Japan is one of the few nations to successfully climb to the top of regional single-seater racing: America has IndyCar in all its red, white and blue cowboy hat, gun-wielding glory and Europe has Formula 1 — priding itself on a more refined palate.
Japan has Super Formula.
It's a hotbed for talent, slotting between IndyCar and F1 in terms of speed and performance, and competes twice a year at the circuit dubbed one of the greatest, and most challenging, tracks on the F1 calendar. F1’s European talent has historically looked at the circuit with starry eyes as drivers soak up the country’s street racing origins and head to Super Formula as a placeholder until other, high-coveted, racing seats are vacated. Some of F1’s most promising young talents were Europeans who once had a stint in the Japanese racing series. As a collective, we love treating Japan like a quasi-home race for the French, German and British-born racers.
But what we don’t love are Japanese drivers.
When Yuki Tsunoda crossed the finish line on Sunday at the Suzuka Circuit in Japan, he basked in the glory of a tenth-place result in his home country. But behind the nation’s F1 poster boy is one Japanese manufacturer’s logo and the critics’ chants of “just a Honda driver.” The automotive company has backed Tsunoda, born outside of Tokyo, throughout his racing career. Despite outperforming his teammate, eight-time winner and 32-time podium finisher Daniel Ricciardo, and providing much of the weekend’s entertainment through overtakes, Tsunoda’s recurrent top 10 rank in an inferior car to rivals doesn’t do much to quell the criticism.
It’s no secret that backing a racing driver in the top global series is good for business. The first Japanese driver to enter an F1 race, 29-year-old Hiroshi Fushida, began his career as a Honda driver and competed in two grands prix across the 1975 season. When the door to the big leagues opened, it was largely because of Maki, a Japanese team that drove in F1 for three years and scored a grand total of zero championship points.
In Honda’s first four years in F1, the company never gave a Japanese driver a seat. When the manufacturer withdrew the Honda R&D Company team from F1 in 1968 as a constructor, citing road car sales issues and the death of driver Jo Schlesser, it redirected resources to sponsoring racers and supplying parts. Japanese drivers soon flocked to the series, largely backed by Honda, Toyota or Yamaha yen.
The former stood apart from the rest, winning eight Drivers’ World Championships as an engine manufacturer for Williams, McLaren and Red Bull.
A Japanese driver, however, never sat at the wheel of one of those championship-winning cars.
In the handful of years Japanese constructors graced European circuits, they notoriously built slow cars, leaving the Japanese drivers they brought into F1 without a chance to wow. Out of the 21 drivers from Japan in F1’s 74 years, none have brought home a trophy above third place. Critics fault Japanese manufacturers for producing “pay drivers,” or competitors who pay for their seats through personal financial backing and sponsorship, and argue that companies like Honda recruit the nation’s drivers without concern for talent.
Yet, many of the country’s F1 athletes have only secured a spot in one race per year: the Japanese Grand Prix. For teams strapped for cash, allowing individual entries from pay drivers and cycling out competitors became a solid business plan. But that also meant that many Japanese drivers who had the chance to drive in F1 were routinely placed in less competitive cars — whether a Japanese manufacturer or not. Even after the sport limited the number of driver swaps over one season in the late ‘70s and the era of full-time seats was solidified, it wasn’t long before Japanese drivers' seats were handed off to someone else. Following regulation changes, it wasn’t until 1987 that F1 was home to a full-time Japanese driver.
As if opening up the flood gates, Satoru Nakajima’s status as the first full-season driver and first Japanese athlete to score points in F1 ushered in a golden era of Japanese drivers. The 1990s quickly became the age of Japan’s top talent — just as the JDM hit record popularity in Europe and America. Six drivers were signed on for more than one season with Aguri Suzuki competing for eight years. Accounting for test drivers and stand-ins, nine Japanese drivers hit the track at least once in the ‘90s, marking the most of any decade.
While it’s not rare for nationality — including a country’s big spenders and interest in car-shaped ad space — to sway a driver’s career prospects, Japan is treated as its own category. Super Formula claiming the second-highest number of pay drivers behind F1 only exacerbates this rhetoric.
China’s Zhou Guanyu and Mexico’s Sergio Perez both racked up points in junior categories, but their home-country connections made for a good sales pitch, too. China controls the global automotive industry, despite a Chinese manufacturer never directly entering the sport as a constructor, and Perez brings Mexican sponsors and pesos. It’s the same for most drivers on the grid. While pay drivers like Canada’s Lance Stroll — beginning his eighth year in the elite racing series at the Bahrain Grand Prix in March — fail to collect race wins, Japanese drivers have historically been booted from the sport with just one or two years (or races) to prove themselves.
Sponsorship remains a hurdle for some. Kamui Kobayashi, the last Japanese driver to compete in F1 and score points during the 2012 Japanese Grand Prix, crowdfunded his return to the sport in 2014.
The treatment of the country’s drivers once they enter the big leagues often cuts deeper than picking apart sponsorship ties.
“Yuki is a very quick driver but, how should I phrase this, I am a little bit more experienced, more mature and complete,” Nyck de Vries, Tsunoda’s teammate for the 2023 season, said. The Dutch driver, who was projected to wipe the floor with his teammate, only finished ahead of Tsunoda in two grands prix out of 10. He was then promptly sacked. De Vries’ replacement, Ricciardo, was anticipated to do the same. Out of seven races, Tsunoda sped across the finish line ahead of him four times. Liam Lawson, Ricciardo’s stand-in last season, was the only driver to best Tsunoda. Lawson came straight from a season fighting for the Super Formula title in Japan.
This season, Tsunoda has out-qualified the other Visa Cash App Racing Bulls (RB) driver each race weekend. Yet Ricciardo is still, reportedly, Red Bull’s top choice for a promotion.
“It seems wild, doesn’t it, that Daniel Ricciardo is still seemingly in contention for this [Red Bull] seat and they don’t seem interested in Yuki Tsunoda who, so far this season, has been outright, not even a question, the dominant driver at that team,” F1 commentator Will Buxton said during the pre-race show in Japan.
Tsunoda went on to outperform Ricciardo following the latter’s crash in the first lap on Sunday.
Both de Vries and Ricciardo have viewed Tsunoda as an easy counterpart who will make them look good. The opposite has occurred. The 23-year-old Japanese driver, however, continues to be overlooked.
Tsunoda, known for his feisty hot-head attitude, is seen as a refreshing reversal of stereotypes. A 2023 New York Times subhead read “The impish persona and insouciant attitude of the Formula 1 driver Yuki Tsunoda have overturned stereotypes. The next step? Showing he can keep up with rivals.” Red Bull, a team that relishes in rash and reckless young drivers, has responded to Tsunoda’s behavior with an unimpressed frown.
While the driver’s engineers and team principal Laurent Mekies have continuously praised his performances, Helmut Marko, head of Red Bull’s driver development program who holds a heavy hand in deciding who joins the team, maintains that the Japanese driver must improve further before stepping up.
The standards seem higher for Japanese drivers.
As skill levels are debated and sponsorship is contested, the topic of financial backing and whether Japanese drivers deserve a seat in F1 is often laced with racial and xenophobic aggression. Their mere presence in racing outside of Japan is fraught with discrimination.
In 2017, a sports journalist was fired from the Denver Post for tweeting “Nothing specifically personal, but I am very uncomfortable with a Japanese driver winning the Indianapolis 500 during Memorial Day weekend.” Shortly before Terry Frei typed up the tweet, Takuma Sato crossed the checkered flag first in the most prestigious American race. He went on to win it again in 2020. In 2022, NASCAR required driver Denny Hamlin to take sensitivity training after posting a video of an Asian woman speaking in “choppy English before moving across six lanes of traffic with no warning, reflecting a racist stereotype about Asian drivers,” reported the Associated Press. The post included half-Japanese NASCAR driver Kyle Larson’s name scrawled across the video. Ahead of this year’s Japanese Grand Prix weekend, social media users reminded fellow F1 fans that shortening the nation’s name was a slur.
Still, there’s hope for progress.
When both Tsunoda and test driver Ayumu Iwasa drove in Friday’s free practice session, it marked the first time two Japanese drivers appeared on track since Kobayashi and Sakon Yamamoto raced in 2010. On Sunday, Ayao Komatsu, Haas F1 Team’s new team principal following Guenther Steiner’s exit, watched on from the pit lane and McLaren reserve driver Ryo Hirakawa sat in the team garage in case of a driver emergency.
We are, however, far from ditching the Honda pay driver rhetoric.
That “we” may not include you. You may love Tsunoda’s rise and embrace him with deafening cheers as he scores the equivalent of a podium for a B-tier team. You may root for Japanese drivers as they win in Le Mans or defy stereotypes in NASCAR. But F1 and its history haven’t shown the same respect for the countrymen who preceded Tsunoda’s success. Even he is still fighting for recognition.
I recently wrote about why Super Formula has failed to garner international attention despite having a winning formula for SportsPro Media’s Blackbook Motorsport.
This piece was heavily inspired by Anthony Bourdain’s essay on America’s relationship with Mexico: Under the Volcano. I consider it mandatory reading.