🇯🇵 Tsugio Matsuda

Tsugio Matsuda is an established professional racing driver and FIA Platinum graded competitor in Japanese and international endurance racing. He drives for Kondo Racing in Super GT, racing a Nissan GT500 in a multiclass championship where two GT classes share the track; he also competes in the World Endurance Championship and international GT racing when called upon. Over a career spanning 27 years from 1998 to 2025, Matsuda has accumulated 153 starts across five series, with 20 wins and 40 podiums.[1]

His primary theatre has been Super GT, where he took 141 starts for Kondo Racing and won the GT500 championship in 2015 with NISMO; he added 19 wins and 37 podiums in that series. He raced in the World Endurance Championship between 2013 and 2016, taking a win and two podiums in five starts for KCMG. Early career appearances in Formula 3 Macau, a field mixing amateurs and professionals in solo racing, yielded one podium in five starts. A pair of one-off entries in the 24-hour multiclass endurance series and GT World Challenge Europe completed his indexed record.[2]

In Super GT, Matsuda regularly faced drivers of his own standing: he ran closely matched with Hiroaki Ishiura and Kazuya Oshima, both established professionals graded Platinum who accumulated 139 and 147 Super GT starts respectively. Against stronger drivers who went on to multiple championships, he proved capable; he finished ahead of Sho Tsuboi 16 times, though Tsuboi won multiple Super GT titles and the 2024 Super Formula championship, and finished ahead of Tadasuke Makino 15 times, with Makino taking the 2020 Super GT GT500 title. Matsuda's career in the series was consistently competitive rather than marked by a single dominant peak, placing him in a field that ranged from amateurs and semi-professionals to Platinum-graded professionals racing the same machinery.