🇯🇵 Hideki Mutoh

Hideki Mutoh is a retired Japanese driver who raced in single-class open-wheel racing and multiclass endurance competition over sixteen seasons from 2007 to 2022. He is an established professional, graded FIA Platinum in endurance racing, the highest of the two full-professional grades. His primary series was Super GT, where he spent twelve seasons with Team Mugen racing in both the GT500 and GT300 classes of shared-car prototypes and production machinery.[1]

Mutoh took 87 starts in Super GT across those years, recording 2 wins and 11 podiums. He won the 2013 Super GT championship with Team Mugen, his only title. In the final season of his career in 2022 he took one win and one podium from eight races and finished 12th in the championship standings. His earlier work came in IndyCar between 2007 and 2011, a period of 54 starts in which he recorded 2 podiums; he raced ovals for most of that spell, with 38 of his 54 IndyCar starts coming on oval tracks.[2]

In Super GT Mutoh raced regularly against established professionals including Bertrand Baguette, the 2022 GT500 champion, with whom he was closely matched, and Daiki Sasaki, a Gold-graded professional, with similar competitive standing between them. He also finished ahead of elite professionals such as Sho Tsuboi, a multiple Super GT and Super Formula champion, on six occasions, and Tadasuke Makino, the 2020 GT500 champion, four times. These results came as a regular presence in a field mixing amateurs and professionals at the highest level of Japanese endurance racing.