Cars

Kazunori Yamauchi added yet another event to his motorsport resume earlier this month when he competed in the 25 Hours of Thunder Hill in California. Yamauchi drove an N-spec Honda Civic for Spoon Sports along with several experienced teammates including Tatsuru Ichishima, Naoki Hattori, and journalist Sam Mitani. The all managed a clean drive, but their performance was unfortunately hampered by penalties for improper fueling and (interestingly) a too-loud exhaust. Nevertheless, it was a great experience for Yamauchi-san who is learning much from all this track time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ateTG5bdoEc

Kazunori Yamauchi’s participation in the VLN’s BFGoodwrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft event on the Nurburgring Nordschleife last month is carefully documented in the latest issue of Auto Express. Editor Owen Mildenhall, who shared the car with Yamauchi and Peter Lyon during the 4 hour endurance race, has posted about the experience on the magazine’s website. Unfortunately, the differential on the team’s Lexus IS-F wasn’t up to the task, forcing Yamauchi to retire the car after just 40 minutes behind the wheel.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year (or just not reading the car magazines/blogs…), you probably know about the new Mercedes SLS AMG – the company’s replacement for the SLR McLaren and the spiritual successor to the classic 300SL Gullwing. It was only recently announced by Mercedes, but that didn’t stop Kazunori Yamauchi from getting the chance to slip behind the wheel. As you can see in these two apparently leaked videos (see the other one here), Yamauchi-san saw the car both with and without camouflage, outside and in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO26tmL-_gE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeXaKFWg9NE