EIcars Bentley have announced that second-generation racing driver Ryo Ogawa will join the team for the first of two official pre-season test sessions, held at Okayama International Circuit from March 17-18.
Ogawa will attempt to pass the rookie license test, in the hopes that he will be able to make his long-awaited Super GT race debut later in the season alongside regular drivers Yuji Ide and Ryohei Sakaguchi.
The son of the late Toyota racing legend Hitoshi Ogawa, 26-year-old Ryo Ogawa has competed in and been a champion in a number of different categories – much like his father did in his career, which was cut short with his fatal accident at a Japanese Formula 3000 race at Suzuka on May 24, 1992.
Ogawa’s first championships came in the Porsche Carrera Cup Japan, where he won back-to-back championships in 2013 and 2014 for K-Touch Racing. After previous stints in Formula Challenge Japan and Super FJ, Ogawa made the step up to the All-Japan Formula 3 National Class, driving for TOM’s – the same team for which his father enjoyed his greatest successes in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
Winning a whopping 13 out of 16 races that year, Ogawa easily wrapped up the N-Class championship in 2015 – a double championship for TOM’s in F3, with Kenta Yamashita winning the overall crown that same year.
Since 2016, Ogawa has competed primarily in the Pirelli Super Taikyu Series, winning the ST-4 Class Championship in 2016 with Endless Sports, and finishing runner-up in the same category in 2017.
This won’t be the first time that Ogawa has tested in Super GT: In June 2016, he successfully passed his rookie test driving for Lamborghini Team Direction at Sportsland SUGO. However, since he did not run a race after that, Ogawa will need to complete the test again as a refresher.
Upon completing the test, Ogawa would be eligible to race in the Autobacs Super GT Series, as a third driver to dual-class race winner Ide and multi-time Super Taikyu champion Sakaguchi, in the first-generation Bentley Continental GT3 which finished five of its six races in their debut season in 2017.
It’s also a chance for Aichi-based EIcars to give an opportunity to a home-grown talent, with Ogawa – who along with his father considered Aichi a “second hometown” – born just east in neighboring Kanagawa.
Hitoshi Ogawa was a key member of a generation of Japanese racing drivers who emerged in the 1980s that included the likes of Masanori Sekiya, Aguri and Toshio Suzuki, and Keiichi Tsuchiya who all raced in Super GT after Ogawa had passed away. Now it seems like his son Ryo is on the fast track to finally putting the Ogawa family name on the Super GT grid in 2018.
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