Aftermarket vehicle customiser Busou Creare will collaborate with Japanese racing team Drago Corse in a joint entry for this year’s Autobacs Super GT Series. The newly-christened Busou Drago Corse team will enter a Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 for veteran drivers Masataka Yanagida and Yuji Ide.
Yanagida is the only driver to win multiple GT500 and GT300 drivers’ championships; before winning back-to-back GT500 titles in 2011-2012, he won his two GT300 championships with Hasemi Motor Sports in 2003 and 2010. It’s a reunion twenty-one years in the making for Yanagida, who made his debut in 2001 as co-driver to Ide – another veteran driver making his return to the series for the first time since 2018.
Ide has won races in both classes of Super GT; he was the 1999 GT300 championship runner-up, and the 2005 Formula Nippon runner-up preceding a brief tenure in Formula 1.
Yanagida scored his most recent GT300 class win at Fuji Speedway in August 2020. He raced in 2021 for the pro-am Arnage Racing team, finishing all seven of the races that he started – but unable to crack into the top ten in an ultra-competitive field stacked with all-pro teams. Both drivers have overall wins in the Suzuka Summer Endurance race – Ide won in 2010, Yanagida in 2012.
Busou emerged as a player in this year’s Super GT off-season at this year’s Tokyo Auto Salon, when CEO Tatsuya Kaneko declared his intent to enter the GT300 class in a joint entry for 2022. In a surprise partnership, they will partner with Drago Corse, an outfit that is intrinsically linked with Honda, but they will switch allegiances to Nissan for 2022 – reflecting Busou’s deep ties with the rival ‘big three’ manufacturer.
Kaneko (pictured above, far left), the son of the late Impul co-founder Yutaka Kaneko, will be the team’s representative director. After racing as an owner/driver for the last four seasons, Honda racing legend and Drago Corse founder, Ryo Michigami (centre right, between Ide and Yanagida), will step out of the cockpit to serve as the team principal.
Busou Drago Corse have also named Hitoshi Iyoki as their chief engineer; Iyoki won two GT500 championships in three years as the engineer for Team Kunimitsu, while also engineering Drago Corse’s Super Formula efforts.
And, continuing the theme of wholesale change at Busou Drago Corse, Dunlop Tyres (Sumitomo Rubber) will be the tyre supplier of the #34 Busou raffinée GT-R. Dunlop-clad cars won three races in GT300 last season, with their clients at R&D Sport winning the GT300 championship.
