Hideki Noda
A year later, Noda went to America and raced in the Indy Lights and became the only Japanese driver to win a CART-sanctioned event. After a few years in America, Noda moved back to Japan, where he drove a Team Cerumo Toyota Supra with Hironori Takeuchi. In the annual non-championship All-Star event at Aida, Noda and Takeuchi were forced out with mechanical problems. In 1999, he joined the Esso Tiger Team Le Mans under Koichiro Mori, again to drive a Toyota Supra, ex-Australian V8 Supercar driver Wayne Gardner. The highlight of their season was  a win at Fuji. With 33 points they were equal 17th in the series. In 2002, Noda returned to the United States and drove in six Indy Racing League IndyCar Series races for Convergent Racing and Indy Regency Racing with a best finish of 10th at Phoenix International Raceway while with Convergent. He also competed in a round of the inaugural A1 Grand Prix season with Japan at Lausitz, where he scored three points for the Japanese team. He has also been seen in the Zytek sports-prototype in 2006. Career. Before Formula One. Born in Osaka, Noda began his  motor racing career through karting. In 1982 he competed in the Kansai Kart Land J-class category, where he was champion. He then took out the Japanese National A-1 class championship the next year, and won the Japanese National A-1 West Division series in 1985. Moving up to the A-2 class for 1986, Noda was Japanese champion again, before going to Japanese Formula Junior 1600 for 1987, where he won four times and was the top rookie. He moved up into the highly competitive world of Japanese Formula Three in 1988. Driving for the JAX Racing Team in a Reynard  873 with a Toyota engine, he came fifth as a 19-year-old in his very first race at Suzuka, and repeated the feat in round four, also at Suzuka. Those were his only two points-scoring finishes; a tally of four points; finishing equal 10th in the series. After then competing in the prestigious Macau Formula Three event at the end of 1988, and harbouring ambitions of Formula One, in 1989 Noda moved to Europe. He raced in both the British Vauxhall Lotus championship (where he came fifth overall with a win at Donington plus two third places, at  Donington and Mondello Park in Ireland), and in the GM Opel Lotus Euroseries, where he was ninth in the standings with second-place finishes at Paul Ricard and Zandvoort. These exploits were impressive enough to land him a ride in British Formula 3 for 1990 with Alan Docking Racing in a Ralt RT34 Mugen. He scored eight points that season, placing 12th in a year dominated by Mika Häkkinen and Mika Salo, but he stayed with the same team for 1991. Upgrading to a Ralt RT35, Noda moved up to seventh overall, scoring 36 points, including a win at Silverstone . This was the first time that a Japanese driver had won a Formula Three race outside of his homeland. By 1992 he was racing in Formula 3000 for the Mike Earle's 3001 International team in a Reynard 92D Mugen, but here he found the going much harder. In ten rounds he failed to qualify once, at Hockenheim, but when he did make it onto the grid he never reached higher than 21st. His first season was also marred by two accidents at Barcelona and Enna, although he became more reliable towards the end of the year, climaxing in an  eighth-place finish at Magny-Cours. In 1993 Noda joined the TOM'S team in a Reynard 93D Cosworth, and although like in 1992 he failed to score any points, he managed to qualify in the top 20 a few times. He also did a good job of bringing the car home, a highlight being ninth at Pau. In Noda's third season in F3000, he switched to the Forti Corse team to drive a Reynard 94D Cosworth as teammate to Pedro Diniz. The pair did well at the Silverstone opener, Noda qualified fourth and Diniz started sixth, with Noda  eventually finishing fifth and scoring his first Formula 3000 points. He then had a mid-season trot in which he qualified fifth, sixth and fifth respectively at Barcelona, Enna and Hockenheim, scoring a podium finish with third place at Enna. He ended the year in equal ninth spot with six points. Formula One. By the end of 1994, though, Noda had landed a Formula One seat. Although his results had not been unimpressive, it was more by virtue of the sponsorship money he brought that he got himself into the financially troubled Larrousse team towards the end of the season . Still a relative unknown on the world stage, though, Noda himself was well aware of the fact that expectations of him were low. As he said himself: ""People think I'm useless."" Despite the limitations of the Larrousse LH94 Ford HB V8 package. As teammate to Érik Comas, at the 1994 European Grand Prix at Jerez, there were fears that both he and fellow newcomer Domenico Schiattarella would be so far off the pace that they would not beat Bertrand Gachot's horrible Pacific to the last grid spot. Such fears proved unfounded, as Noda qualified within a second of  Comas' time, and was the 25th fastest. But when David Brabham's best time in the Simtek was disallowed, Noda was bumped up to 24th on the grid, alongside Comas in 23rd. But in another department, he had comprehensively thrashed his more experienced teammate. Under braking, he was pulling 4.1g, a Larrousse record, whereas Comas often pulled less than 3g. It showed how quickly he had got the hang of powerful Formula One brakes. In the race, he stalled on the grid, the same as his countryman, Ukyo Katayama. Both were push-started on their way, but while  Katayama proceeded to storm back through the field to finish in seventh, Noda could do no more than tour at the back. That he only did for 10 laps, before he suffered a terminal gearbox problem and began limping back to the pits. Yet as he did so, the front-running pair of Rubens Barrichello's Jordan and Nigel Mansell's Williams came up to lap him. Noda was a touch too slow in getting out of the way, and both Barrichello and Mansell had to guess which side to pass. Rubens pulled to the right and safely negotiated his  way around the Larrousse, but all Nigel could do was lock his brakes and ram the back of the Japanese driver. Noda pulled in to retire, and Mansell eventually had to come in for a new nose cone, ruining his race and denting his reputation. Noda's luck would then get no better at his home race in Japan, where he qualified 23rd, once again only one spot off Comas, although this time he was only 0.013s behind the Frenchman. His experience at Suzuka was obviously paying rich dividends, but when torrential rain drenched the circuit on race day, it  would suddenly be a whole new ball game. The opening laps saw cars slide off the circuit, but he would never get the choice to join the chaos, as his fuel injection system failed on the very first lap. In fact the entire Japanese contingent suffered a dreadful race, especially when both Katayama and rookie Taki Inoue then aquaplaned into the pit wall at the end of lap three in separate incidents. Within the first few minutes all the local heroes were out of the race. The last race in Adelaide was little better. By now Comas had gone, replaced  by Swiss pay driver Jean-Denis Délétraz. Noda out-qualified his teammate by two grid positions and almost 2.3 seconds. From 23rd on the grid, he was passed off the line by the Simteks of Brabham and Schiattarella, and he trailed around in second-last spot for 18 laps before an oil leak brought his race to a premature end once again. Still, in his three outings he had done a respectable enough job, and he was thought to have been in the frame for a few Formula One seats come 1995. As it turned out, Larrousse folded, and the  only deal that came his way was to drive the Simtek in the second half of 1995 as Jos Verstappen's teammate, with Schiattarella racing in the first half of the year. Even so, the deposit Noda paid for the seat and the money he was going to bring to the team was of massive importance to the cash-strapped operation. However, things quickly turned sour. Although he watched the first few races of the 1995 season with envy as Jos Verstappen and Schiattarella demonstrated the promise of the new car, the truth was that his funds had taken a  battering after the devastating Kobe earthquake. It contributed to Simtek's mounting financial problems, resulting in the team's closure after Monaco. Noda never even got to drive the car; he was forced to forfeit his deposit and the rest of his 1995 went up in smoke. The Forti team attempted to enter him in the 1995 Pacific Grand Prix in place of Roberto Moreno, but he was denied an FIA Super Licence despite his previous experience. He was also considered for a drive at the team in , but the seat went to Luca Badoer instead. After Formula One. American  Open Wheelers (1996–1997). With that, Noda was out of the picture as far as Formula One was concerned, so for 1996 he went across the Atlantic to try his luck in Indy Lights in America. Adapting quickly, he finished third on the streets of Toronto in his first year, and in 1997 continued in the same category, driving a Lola T97/20 for the Indy Regency Racing as teammate to Mexican driver Rodolfo Lavin. 1997 was actually a very competitive year in Indy Lights, with future CART drivers: Cristiano da Matta; Tony Kanaan and Hélio Castroneves all racing for leading teams . Noda was also not the only Japanese driver in the entry lists, with ex-Formula One driver, Naoki Hattori and the unrelated Shigeaki Hattori also in the field. In the end Castroneves and da Matta took three wins each, but despite only taking one victory Kanaan's consistency won him the series. Noda was ninth with 51 points. Though he was usually a midfield runner, he did qualify second and finish third on the streets of Vancouver, but it was at Portland where he had his fifteen minutes of fame. There he also started from second on the grid, but  come race day it rained and Noda could put his European experience to good use. After dicing with Castroneves for most of the race, he passed the Brazilian on lap 22 for the lead, and when the race was stopped after 29 laps, Noda was declared the winner. It was the first, and to this point, only time a Japanese driver has won a CART-sanctioned event. Those seven laps in front were the only ones Noda led all year. Despite his winning performance, he was never on the Champ Car shopping lists, and by 1998 the American adventure was  looking a bit like a dead end. Back To Japan (1998–2001). In 1998 he returned to Japan, and in the four seasons since has had parallel careers in Formula Nippon and the Japanese GT Championship. In the latter he drove a Team Cerumo Toyota Supra in 1998 with Hironori Takeuchi, finishing fifth at Motegi and third at Sugo, scoring 22 points for equal 21st overall. The season was marred, though, by the abandonment of the Fuji round due to fog, and in the annual non-championship All-Star event at Aida, Noda and Takeuchi were forced out with mechanical problems . In 1999 he joined the Esso Tiger Team Le Mans under Koichiro Mori, again to drive a Toyota Supra, this time alongside ex-500 cc motorcycle World Champion and Australian V8 Supercar driver Wayne Gardner. In truth it was an inconsistent season, with several rather average results offset by fastest lap at Sugo (despite a retirement), fifth at both Mine and the non-championship Fuji 1000 km, and, in the highlight of their season, a fine win plus fastest lap for Noda at Fuji. With 33 points they were equal 17th in the series. The combination of Noda, Gardner and the  Esso Le Mans am remained the same for 2000, and this time consistency was their key, finishing six of the seven races in the top 10, with an eighth at Motegi, seventh places at Sugo and Aida, sixth at Suzuka, fifth at Mine and fourth at Fuji. However, they were unable to make it onto the podium, and with 35 points they could only rank equal 14th overall. Also, at the All-Star event held at Sepang, Noda and Gardner took ninth place, albeit a lap down. Noda also competed in the Formula Nippon series from 1998 to 2001. In  1998 he drove for the Cosmo Oil Racing Team in the standard Lola T98/51 chassis with the obligatory Mugen engine, but apart from a third at Sugo and a smattering of fifths and sixths, there were also three spin-outs at Mine and Suzuka, the first of which Noda crashed twice. With nine points he could only manage 10th overall. In 1999 he switched to the Be Brides Impul team. Starting the season in a Lola B99/51 Mugen, he could not break into the top ten in either qualifying or races, and in midstream the team changed to a Reynard  99L chassis. This brought about an upturn in fortunes, and towards the end of the year Noda recorded a sixth at Suzuka, second at Mine and ninth at Motegi, and with seven points ended up in 11th position. A full season in a Reynard 99L Mugen for the Le Mans team in 2000 saw Noda jump up to fifth place with 15 points, with a sixth at Fuji, fifths at Suzuka and Motegi, third at Mine and second at Suzuka. But this was very little compared to another ex-Formula One driver, Toranosuke Takagi, who won eight of the ten  rounds for the Nakajima team, scoring a mammoth 86 points to second-placed Michael Krumm's 34. After the improvement of 2000, though, in 2001 Noda joined the DoCoMo Dandelion Racing team, piloting a Reynard 2KL Mugen. In an ambitious operation, the team also ran an older Reynard 99L for one-time Benetton test driver Hidetoshi Mitsusada and Polish racer Jaroslav Wierczuk. It was probably too much for the outfit, and it showed as Noda failed to score any points at all, retiring from six of the 10 rounds, despite a best qualifying effort of 3rd at Motegi. Noda returned  to the United States in 2002 and drove in six Indy Racing League races for Convergent Racing and Indy Regency Racing (whom Noda drove for in Indy Lights) with a best finish of 10th at Phoenix International Raceway while with Convergent. A1 Grand Prix (2005–2009). In 2005, Noda was announced as the second driver for the Japan entry for the 2005-06 A1 Grand Prix season, second to Ryo Fukuda. His first race for the team came at the second round at Lausitz, where he qualified in 21st place. In sprint race, Noda managed to move up 11 places to  finish 10th and score one point for Japan. The feature race saw Noda finish one place higher in ninth place, scoring a further two points for the Japanese A1 GP team. Japan finished 21st at the end of the season, with eight points. Personal life. Noda's daughter Juju is also a racing driver, who currently competes in the W Series. References. All Formula One race and championship results are taken from: All IRL race and championship results are taken from: