🇯🇵 Katsumasa Chiyo

Katsumasa Chiyo is an established professional sportscar driver with a Racer Rating of 6,763, placing him among the elite tier of drivers competing at the highest levels of GT and endurance racing. His FIA Gold categorisation confirms his status as a full professional within that discipline. Over 15 seasons since 2012, Chiyo has competed almost entirely in Super GT, where he has secured 4 wins and 13 podiums across 88 starts for the NISMO factory team, anchoring his career in Japan's premier sportscar series.[1]

Chiyo's record against his most frequent rivals reveals a driver who operates at the sharp end of a competitive field but sits below its very strongest figures. He holds a decisive head-to-head advantage over Silver and Gold graded professionals such as Nobuteru Taniguchi and Tatsuya Kataoka, winning those matchups by roughly five to one. However, his record against Platinum graded champions tells a different story; he has finished ahead of Naoki Yamamoto only 19 times in 82 shared races and trails Kazuya Oshima 24 to 59 across 83 encounters. Against the generation of drivers rated above 7,000, Tadasuke Makino, Yamamoto, Kenta Yamashita, and Bertrand Baguette, Chiyo has recorded occasional victories but remains on the losing end of those pairings overall. His average finishing position of P12.4 across all starts reflects a career spent competing consistently at the mid-field level of strong grids.[2]

Chiyo remains active in 2026, having added one podium across two Super GT rounds so far. His career has been defined by stability within the Nissan ecosystem, competing as a factory driver through both the Nissan Driver Development Program and NISMO, a testament to his consistency and reliability as a professional sportscar competitor, though his record indicates he operates a tier below the championship-winning elite of his field.