Yoshimasa Sugawara

Born in 1941 in Otaru, Hokkaido — a port town that once boomed on herring fishing — Yoshimasa Sugawara became a racing driver, and honestly that combination just hits different. The postwar generation had every reason to put their heads down and be sensible, but here's a guy who pointed himself at a racetrack instead. Japanese motorsport in that era was rough, under-resourced, and not exactly glamorous, so the commitment it took to show up and push a car to its limit feels genuinely hardcore to me. He went on to become one of the first Japanese drivers to take on rally raids in the 1970s, and the image of a kid forged by cold Sea of Japan winters, growing up to chase speed for a living, is already a full story.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Yoshimasa Sugawara is a Japanese racing driver born on May 31, 1941, in Otaru, Hokkaido. He is among the generation of motorsport competitors who pursued professional racing during Japan's postwar high-growth era. He has competed in 36 Dakar Rallies as of the 2019 edition, reaching the podium seven times in the trucks category, and is chairman of Japan Racing Management.

Name (English)

Yoshimasa Sugawara

Name (Japanese)

菅原義正

Reading

すがわら よしまさ

Born

May 31, 1941 (age 85)

Origin

Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan

Occupation

Racing driver

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Gemini / Snake

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%8F%85%E5%8E%9F%E7%BE%A9%E6%AD%A3
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4022905

Tags

• From Hokkaido
• Racing driver

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.