Sakon Yamamoto

By Renault F1
February 8 2008

Yamamoto began his racing career at 14 with a course at the Suzuka Kart Racing School. He raced karts at Suzuka for the next two years and by 1999 had won the Japanese national kart title. In 2001 he switched to Formula 3 with TOM's and finished fourth at his first attempt. The decision was taken to switch to racing in Europe and for 2002 Yamamoto became a member of GM Motorsport (a team run by Manfred Gronemeyer and Sigi Muller rather than the giant US automobile company). This was not a success and he ended the year with Team Kolles.

He went back to Japan in 2004 and finished seventh in the All Japan F3 Series with a TOM'S Dallara, a rather disappointing result. As a result he spent 2005 racing for TOM'S in the Japanese Super GT Series and at the end of the year negotiated a deal to become the test driver with the Jordan F1 team at the Japanese GP at Suzuka, a track he knew well. He did an impressive job and started the 2006 season in Formula Nippon with the Kondo team before being called in to F1 by Super Aguri F1 after the team was forced to drop Yuji Ide.

The team decided to sign up Anthony Davidson for 2007 but Yamamoto was taken on as a test driver. Later in the year he appeared at Spyker, replacing Christijan Albers for the final races of the season.

Key facts:

Date of birth: 9 July 1982

Place of birth: Toyohashi, Japan

Nationality: Japanese

Height: 172cm

Weight: 62kg

Grand Prix debut: Hungary, 2006

Grand Prix starts: 14

Best race classification: 12th

Career Summary:

2000: Karting

2001: All Japan F3 (4th)

2002: German F3

2003: F3 Euroseries

2004: Japanese F3 (7th)

2005: Formula Nippon (10th), Japanese Super GT Championship (7th) & F1 testing with Jordan

2006: Formula Nippon (11th) and Super Aguri F1 Team for final seven races (26th, 0pts)

2007: GP2 with BCN Competition & Spyker F1 Team for final seven races (30th, 0pts)