🇯🇵 Katsuyuki Hiranaka

Katsuyuki Hiranaka is an entry-level professional racing in Japan's Super GT championship, a multiclass endurance series in which cars are shared between multiple drivers. He drives for Shade Racing in the GT300 class, which fields a mix of FIA GT3 machinery and Japanese-built GT300 specials. Hiranaka holds an FIA Gold grade, the professional classification in endurance racing. He has raced since 2002, with 190 starts across four series; most of those 145 starts have come in Super GT from 2008 onward.[1]

Over his eighteen Super GT seasons, Hiranaka has taken ten wins and thirty-three podiums. His single-seater career was largely spent in Formula 3 competition; he made thirty-six starts in the Formula 3 Euro Series between 2003 and 2004 for Prema Powerteam, where he took one podium among a field mixing amateurs with graded professionals, and eight starts in Formula 3 Macau across 2002 to 2004, yielding two podiums. His only World Endurance Championship appearance came in 2013, when he started one round for Gainer International in the LMP2 class and finished on the podium; he ended that season eighteenth in the championship standings.[2]

In Super GT, Hiranaka is a regular alongside Tatsuya Kataoka, the three-time GT300 champion, and Hiroki Yoshimoto, a Gold-graded professional with experience in GP2 and international sportscar racing; he runs closely matched with both. His record in single-seaters included finishes ahead of Nico Rosberg, the 2016 Formula 1 world champion and 2005 GP2 champion, in Formula 3 Macau, and ahead of Alex Palou, who has won five consecutive IndyCar championships, though those meetings were early in their careers. Shade Racing, his team since at least 2008, has taken twenty-four race wins with twelve drivers across the indexed record, with Katsumasa Chiyo among them.