In what has already been a busy week for Super GT drivers announcing their departures from their existing teams, today it was confirmed that veteran driver Katsuyuki Hiranaka would be leaving GT300 team Gainer after thirteen seasons.
“Katsuyuki Hiranaka, who has been driving the number 11 car for many years and has been the ace driver of Gainer, will graduate from Gainer this month,” the team said in a statement issued today. “It’s going to be a big blow for Gainer, but we want to send him off on a good note.”
“It was Gainer that gave me back the confidence I had lost, when I joined the team in 2009,” Hiranaka said on his Twitter today. “Over the past 12 years, I have learned so many things.”
Hiranaka joined Gainer in 2009 after three seasons in GT500 – two with Toyota, and one with Honda. Over the span of 104 races across those thirteen years, Hiranaka won ten races driving for four different manufacturers: Ferrari, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and Nissan. In fact, he gave Audi and Mercedes-Benz their first GT300 class victories as the ‘GT3 Revolution’ began.
For the last four seasons, Hiranaka has driven with Hironobu Yasuda in the #11 Gainer TanaX Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3, winning their class in the prestigious Fuji 500km race in 2019.
Hiranaka recorded 29 podiums and 78 top-ten finishes over his tenure at Gainer, and finished runner-up in the Drivers’ Championship three times in 2011, 2013, and 2014. He also ranked third in 2009 and 2019, making him the most successful active GT300 driver that has yet to win a championship as a driver.
The closest call Hiranaka had to winning the drivers’ crown was in 2014, when he and Björn Wirdheim lost to Goodsmile Racing & Team UKYO’s Nobuteru Taniguchi on a tiebreaker. But the Gainer team won the GT300 Teams’ Championship over Goodsmile Racing by a single point.
Hiranaka also had the opportunity to race in the FIA World Endurance Championship, as Gainer partnered with Greaves Motorsport to field a one-off LMP2 entry in the 2013 6 Hours of Fuji. Hiranaka, Wirdheim, and gentleman driver Masayuki Ueda qualified and finished third in their class, in a race that was shortened to just 16 laps due to monsoon conditions.
Gainer will continue to field two cars in 2022, according to team director Mika Ishida. But they now have at least two driving vacancies to fill, following Hiranaka’s departure as well as the retirement of Kazuki Hoshino.
Photos courtesy of Gainer Inc. and Pierre-Laurent Ribault
