Dakar Rally and World Rally Championship event winner Kenjiro Shinozuka has died aged 75 after a battle with illness.
Shinozuka shot to fame by becoming the first Japanese driver to claim outright victories in both the WRC and the gruelling Dakar Rally.
"Born in Tokyo, Shinozuka's greatest success came as a factory Mitsubishi driver. In 1988, he claimed the inaugural Asia-Pacific championship alongside co-driver Fred Gocentas. The pair took the title scoring a solitary rally win in India at the Himalayan Rally, driving a Mitsubishi Galant VR-4.
But it was in 1991 when he and co-driver John Meadows left their mark on the WRC by taking a factory-backed Galant VR-4 to victory in the Ivory Coast round of the WRC to claim one of two WRC wins. On this occasion, Shinozuka claimed a first WRC win for a Japanese driver with a margin of more than two hours over local Mitsubishi driver Patrick Tauziac.
Shinozuka outlined his skills in particularly challenging rallies by repeating his Ivory Coast success the following season, this time beating Belgian, Opel driver Bruno Thiry.
This was the last of the Japanese pilot’s WRC triumphs having racked up 88 points from 20 starts in a WRC career that began in 1976 and ended with his last outing in Australia in 1997. All bar one start was behind the wheel of a Mitsubishi in a relationship with the Japanese brand that extended into rally-raid.
