🇯🇵 Keiko Ihara

Keiko Ihara is a retired professional sportscar driver who raced in the FIA World Endurance Championship between 2012 and 2018. She competed in the LMP2 prototype class, sharing her car with co-drivers across a multiclass endurance grid that mixed amateurs, semi-professionals, and graded professionals. Her primary team was Gulf Racing Middle East.[1]

Ihara contested seventeen WEC starts over seven seasons, scoring two podium finishes. Her racing took place in a field where established professionals and multiple series champions were routine competitors. She finished mid-field in the 2018 WEC championship standings, her final season of indexed racing.[2]

Among the drivers she regularly faced were Olivier Pla and Roman Rusinov, both established professionals with extensive WEC experience; Ihara typically finished behind them. She finished ahead of Anthony Davidson, a Platinum-graded professional and 2014 WEC LMP1 champion, and Pastor Maldonado, a former GP2 champion with ninety-six Formula 1 starts, though each instance occurred once across their overlapping careers.