Le Mans Ltd., headquartered in

Shibuya Shibuya ( 渋谷区 ''Shibuya-ku'') is a special ward in Tokyo, Japan. As a major commercial and finance center, it houses two of the busiest railway stations in the world, Shinjuku Station (southern half) and Shibuya Station. As of April 1 ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

is an automobile parts manufacturer founded in 1967. The original company name was Le Mans Chamber of Commerce. The company is mainly engaged in the development and sales of motorsport parts and the import and sale of race cars overseas. They also have a racing division called Team LeMans. The origin of the team name comes from

24 Hours of Le Mans The 24 Hours of Le Mans (french: link=no, 24 Heures du Mans) is an endurance-focused Sports car racing, sports car race held annually near the town of Le Mans, France. It is the world's oldest active Endurance racing (motorsport), endurance r ...

. The team currently competes in

Super GT Super GT (stylized as SUPER GT) is a grand touring car racing series that began in 1993. Launched as the , generally referred to as either the JGTC or the All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship, the series was renamed to Super GT in 2005. It is ...

, fielding the #6 Audi R8 LMS Evo II in the GT300 class for Yoshiaki Katayama and

Roberto Merhi Roberto Merhi Muntan (born 22 March 1991), is a Spanish racing driver who drove in Formula One for the Manor Marussia F1 Team during the 2015 season. Merhi has also raced in the Formula Renault 3.5 Series for Pons Racing, and won the Formula 3 ...

Team LeMans

In 1969 Team LeMans was established as a racing department of Le Mans Chamber of Commerce. It has been active in a variety of categories since the 1970s as one of the top teams of Japan. The team has competed in

single-seaters An open-wheel single-seater (often known as formula car) is a car with the wheels outside the car's main body, and usually having only one seat. Open-wheel cars contrast with street cars, sports cars, stock cars, and touring cars, which have thei ...

since 1976, when they entered the All-Japan F2000 Championship. They served as the Japanese distributor of

Reynard Reynard the Fox is a literary cycle of medieval allegorical Dutch, English, French and German fables. The first extant versions of the cycle date from the second half of the 12th century. The genre was popular throughout the Late Middle Ages, as ...

products until 2002. In 1991,

Michael Schumacher Michael Schumacher (; ; born 3 January 1969) is a German former racing driver who competed in Formula One for Jordan, Benetton, Ferrari, and Mercedes. Schumacher has a joint-record seven World Drivers' Championship titles (tied with Lewis ...

, before his

Formula One Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...

debut, raced with the team in the Sportsland SUGO round of the Japanese Formula 3000 Championship, while in 1996 his brother Ralf became the champion with the same team. They also developed their own racing machine, that complied to

Group C Group C was a category of sports car racing introduced by the FIA in 1982 and continuing until 1993, with ''Group A'' for touring cars and ''Group B'' for GTs. It was designed to replace both Group 5 special production cars (closed top touri ...

regulations. In 2012 in collaboration with

Hideki Noda is a Japanese professional racing driver. He participated in three Formula One Grands Prix, débuting in the 1994 European Grand Prix, but did not score any championship points. He replaced Yannick Dalmas in the Larrousse car for the last thre ...

they founded "NODA racing Academy Senior High School", several engineers such as Donuma Hiroyoshi, the team principal, have served as lecturers at the school.

History

All-Japan F2000/F2/F3000 Championship

Their participation in the All Japan F2000 Championship started with

Keiji Matsumoto was a Japanese racing driver who competed at the top level of Japanese Formula racing, currently known as Super Formula, between 1976 and 1992. Under the Japanese Formula 2 moniker, he won the championship in 1979 and was runner-up to future Form ...

in 1976. In 1979 he won the championship title. In 1988-89 Geoff Lees and

Emanuele Pirro Emanuele Pirro (born 12 January 1962) is an Italian racing driver who has raced in Formula One, touring cars and in endurance races such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans which he has won a total of five times. Two times Italian Karting Champion (19 ...

raced for the team, both winning one race.

Formula Nippon

In 1996, the team had its most successful year in Japan's top level open wheel series, when

Ralf Schumacher Ralf Schumacher (born 30 June 1975) is a German former racing driver. He is the younger brother of seven-time Formula One World Champion Michael Schumacher, and the pair are the only siblings to each win Formula One races. Schumacher began kart ...

and

Naoki Hattori is a motoring journalist and racing driver from Japan. After he won the Japanese Formula 3 championship in 1990, he failed to pre-qualify for two Formula One Grands Prix with Coloni in 1991 as a late-season replacement for Pedro Chaves. He r ...

took the first two spots in the drivers' championship, also winning the first team title. The team repeated wins in the drivers and team championship with

Satoshi Motoyama Satoshi Motoyama (本山哲 - Motoyama Satoshi; born March 4, 1971) is a Japanese professional racing driver and team manager. He is best known for racing in the Super GT Series, formerly known as the All-Japan Grand Touring Car Championship (JGT ...

in 1998.

Fuji GC

The team achieved titles in The

Fuji Grand Champion Series The ran from 1971 to 1989. It was a drivers' championship in Japan and was originally for 2 litre Group B6 cars. The series was started in 1971, and all races were held at the Fuji Speedway circuit. History In its formative years, cars elig ...

(Fuji GC) with in

in 1983 and Geoff Lees in 1988 and 1989.

24 Hours of Le Mans

Team LeMans first entered the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1987 under the name Italya Sports. They competed in the race through 1990 without a single finish.

All-Japan GT Championship/Super GT

Team LeMans first entered the

All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship is a grand touring car racing series that began in 1993. Originally titled as the , generally referred to as either the JGTC the series was renamed to Super GT in 2005. It was the top level of sports car r ...

on its inaugural season in

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which Sinking of the MS Estonia, sank in ...

, fielding a production based

Nissan 300ZX The Nissan 300ZX is a sports car that was produced across two different generations. As with all other versions of the Z, the 300ZX was sold within the Japanese domestic market under the name Fairlady Z. It was sold in Japan from 1983 to 2000 a ...

-LM in the GT1 class with

FedEx FedEx Corporation, formerly Federal Express Corporation and later FDX Corporation, is an American multinational conglomerate holding company focused on transportation, e-commerce and business services based in Memphis, Tennessee. The name "Fe ...

as their primary sponsor. The team took three top-10 finishes with

Masami Kageyama is a Japanese racing driver from Kanagawa Prefecture.Masami Kageyama ...

and finished 17th in the drivers standings. Kageyama and the 300ZX returned to compete in the following year, but the team failed to score any points and was not classified in the standings. For the 1996 season, Team LeMans bought an ex-

IMSA The International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) is a North American sports car racing sanctioning body based in Daytona Beach, Florida under the jurisdiction of the ACCUS arm of the FIA. It was started by John Bishop, a former executive direc ...

Nissan 300ZX-GTS to compete in the rebranded GT500 class. Kageyama and series debutant

Yuji Tachikawa Yuji Tachikawa (立川祐路, ''Tachikawa Yūji'', born July 5, 1975 in Kanagawa is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April ...

took one top-10 finish in the final round of the championship at

Mine Circuit Mine Circuit (みねサーキット) was a motor racing circuit in Nagao, Nishiatsu-cho, Mine, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. It used to be known as ''Nishinihon''. The track closed in February 2006. It was one of the main circuits in Japanese mo ...

and finished 25th in the drivers standings. Tachikawa stayed with the team for the 1997 season and was partnered by Tsuyoshi Takahashi, who replaced Kageyama after he was signed by

SARD is a Japanese tuning company and racing team from Toyota, Aichi, mainly competing in the Super GT series and specialising in Toyota tuning parts. History The company was formed in 1972 as Sigma Automotive Co., Ltd by Shin Kato to develop and ...

. The team took a 10th place finish in the season opening round at Suzuka, but a practice crash in the next round at

Fuji Fuji may refer to: Places China * Fuji, Xiangcheng City (付集镇), town in Xiangcheng City, Henan Japan * Mount Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan * Fuji River * Fuji, Saga, town in Saga Prefecture * Fuji, Shizuoka, city in Shizuoka Prefec ...

totaled their 300ZX-GTS and the team was forced to withdraw their entry for the rest of the season. Team LeMans didn't take part in the 1998 season, but they returned in 1999 after they took over the entry of the #6

Esso Esso () is a trading name for ExxonMobil. Originally, the name was primarily used by its predecessor Standard Oil of New Jersey after the breakup of the original Standard Oil company in 1911. The company adopted the name "Esso" (the phonetic p ...

Tiger

Toyota Supra is a sports car and grand tourer manufactured by the Toyota Motor Corporation beginning in 1978. The name "supra" is derived from the Latin prefix, meaning "above", "to surpass" or "go beyond". The initial four generations of the Supra were pr ...

from Inging Motorsport. LeMans signed former

driver

and reigning GT300 champion

Shingo Tachi was a Japanese racing driver, the son of Nobuhide Tachi (舘信秀), founder and head of TOM's, the motorsport side of Toyota. Tachi raced in British Formula Vauxhall with Rowan Racing in 1994 and 1995 before switching to British Formula 3 in ...

to compete with the team, but Tachi was killed in a pre-season testing accident at TI Aida with less than two weeks before the start of the 1999 season. Former

MotoGP Grand Prix motorcycle racing is the premier class of motorcycle road racing events held on road circuits sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM). Independent motorcycle racing events have been held since the start ...

champion

Wayne Gardner Wayne Michael Gardner (born 11 October 1959) is an Australian former professional Grand Prix motorcycle and touring car racer. His most notable achievement was winning the 1987 500 cc Motorcycle World Championship, becoming the first Aust ...

was then signed by the team to replace Tachi. The team took a pole position in the third round at Sportsland Sugo and a victory in the fifth round at

Fuji Speedway is a motorsport race track standing in the foothills of Mount Fuji, in Oyama, Suntō District, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. It was built in the early 1960s. In the 1980s, Fuji Speedway was used for the FIA World Sportscar Championship and nati ...

on their first season with

Toyota is a Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on . Toyota is one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world, producing about 10 ...

, finishing 12th in the drivers standings. In 2002, the team won drivers' championship in the GT500 class of the

with

Akira Iida is a Japanese racing driver currently competing in the Super GT series in GT300 class with , one of the teams under Toyota Motorsport's GAZOO racing arm. Iida won the 2002 All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship GT500 class with Esso Toyot ...

and

Juichi Wakisaka is a former Japanese racing driver who was a 2002, 2006 and 2009 champion in Japan's Super GT series in the Super GT#GT500, GT500 category. Prior to the 1998 Formula One World Championship , 1998 Formula One season he tested for the Jordan Grand ...

, who competed in a

race car. Wakisaka, as team principal, would later led Team LeMans to a second GT500 class title in 2019 with the driving pairing of

Kazuya Oshima is a Japanese racing driver, currently racing in the Super GT Series and the Super Formula Championship for Toyota Gazoo Racing and ROOKIE Racing. Oshima is one of only two drivers that have won championships in both classes of Super GT: He wo ...

and

Kenta Yamashita is a Japanese racing driver, known for his successes in single-seater junior categories, including winning the 2013 Formula Challenge Japan and the 2012 Motegi Championship Formula Super FJ. He currently races in the Super Formula Championship, ...

, but the team left the series at the conclusion of the season. Team LeMans provided support to Hitotsuyama Racing in 2020 before they reentered the series in 2021 under a collaboration with Motoyama Racing. LeMans entered the #6 Audi R8 LMS Evo for ex-GT500 champion

and Yoshiaki Katayama, son of the team's owner Yoshinori Katayama, in the GT300 class. The team finished all races that year, but was not classified as they failed to score a points finish. Motoyama and Katayama returned the following year with an Evo II model of the Audi R8 LMS, but Motoyama was released after one round. Financial issues on Motoyama's sponsors was reported to be the primary reason of Motoyama's dismissal.

was then signed by the team to replace Motoyama for the rest of the season.

Team LeMans Results

Super GT (JGTC)

Season still in progress

All Japan Sports Prototype Championship

24 Hours of Le Mans

Super Formula (Formula Nippon, Japanese Formula 3000, Japanese Formula 2000)

Footnotes

External links

Ltd. Le Mans

Team LeMans
{{DEFAULTSORT:Le Mans Japanese racecar constructors Japanese auto racing teams Automotive companies based in Tokyo Manufacturing companies based in Tokyo Japanese Formula 3 Championship teams Formula Nippon teams Super GT teams Super Formula teams Toyota in motorsport World Sportscar Championship teams Auto racing teams established in 1969