🇯🇵 Kazuto Kotaka

Kazuto Kotaka is a professional driver, FIA Gold graded, racing in Japanese national and international GT and endurance championships. He competes in Super GT for APR, driving the team's LC500h, and holds the 2022 Super Formula Lights championship won with TOM'S. His racing spans single-seater and GT machinery; beyond his Super GT campaign he races GT4 cars in the Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie and Nürburgring 24 Hours, and contested GT World Challenge events in Asia and Europe in 2025 and 2026.[1]

Kotaka has spent eight seasons racing competitively across multiple series since 2019. His career peaked early with eight wins and thirteen podiums across twenty-one Super Formula Lights starts, securing the 2022 title. He has since moved into sports-car racing; in Super GT, his main series, he has taken six podiums from thirty-six starts across that span. In the Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie he has won once in nine starts, with three podiums, and has made two appearances in the Nürburgring 24 Hours. His Super Formula campaign, running since 2021 in parallel with GT racing, has yielded no wins from forty-three starts. The 2026 Super GT season is still running; Kotaka has taken two podiums from four rounds raced so far.[2]

On the Super GT grid Kotaka races as a peer to established professionals and against drivers at his own level. He runs closely matched with Kakunoshin Ohta, an established professional and Gold-graded driver, and with Hibiki Taira, a professional graded Silver. His record includes victories over elite-level opposition; he has beaten Sho Tsuboi, five-time Super GT champion and 2024 Super Formula title winner, twice, and has one win against Liam Lawson, a Platinum-graded driver with fifty-one Formula 1 starts and experience in Formula 2 and Formula 3.