General Suzuki
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General Suzuki

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Toshio Suzuki (鈴木 利男, born 10 March 1955 in Saitama Prefecture, Japan) is a former Japanese racing driver whose career spanned karting, Formula Three, single-seater national championships, endurance racing, and touring cars across four decades. He is best known internationally for co-winning the 1992 24 Hours of Daytona and for finishing second overall at the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans with the Toyota GT-One. He is unrelated to fellow Japanese racing driver Aguri Suzuki.

Suzuki won the All-Japan Kart Championship in both 1975 and 1976. In 1979, in the competition's inaugural year, he claimed the first All-Japan Formula Three Championship title. He subsequently competed intermittently in the Japanese Formula Two and later the Japanese Formula 3000 series through the 1980s, achieving his best result in 1987 with a fifth-place finish in the championship driving for Heroes Racing Corporation.

In 1992 Suzuki won the 24 Hours of Daytona alongside Kazuyoshi Hoshino and Masahiro Hasemi. That same year he finished runner-up in the Japanese Formula 3000 championship.

Suzuki's Le Mans career extended across eleven entries from 1985 to 2008. His earliest appearances with Dome-Toyota machinery — in 1985 and 1986 with Eje Elgh as co-driver — both ended in retirement. In 1988 he drove a March 88S-Nissan for Team Le Mans, also retiring. In 1989 and 1990, paired again with Hoshino and Hasemi for Nissan Motorsports, he retired in 1989 but finished fifth overall in 1990 in the Nissan R90CP.

After an absence, he returned in 1993 driving the Toyota TS010 for Toyota Team Tom's alongside Eddie Irvine and Masanori Sekiya, finishing fourth overall. A further gap followed, then in 1995 and 1996 he competed in the GT1 class for NISMO in Nissan Skyline GT-R LM machinery, retiring in 1995 and finishing 15th overall in 1996.

The defining chapter of his Le Mans career came in 1998 and 1999 with Toyota Motorsport and Toyota Team Europe, co-driving the Toyota GT-One with Ukyo Katayama and Keiichi Tsuchiya. In 1998 the car completed 326 laps before retiring. In 1999 the same trio — in the same car configuration — finished second overall and first in the LMGTP class, completing 364 laps. The 1999 result remains Suzuki's highest-profile international motorsport achievement.

In 2000 he drove a Panoz LMP-1 Roadster-S for TV Asahi Team Dragon alongside Masami Kageyama and Masahiko Kageyama, finishing sixth in the LMP900 class. His final Le Mans appearance was in 2008 with Tokai University YGK Power in a Courage-Oreca LC70 LMP1 car co-driven by Haruki Kurosawa and Masami Kageyama; the car did not finish.

In 1993 Suzuki made two Formula One starts, standing in for Philippe Alliot at the Larrousse team in a Larrousse LH93 powered by a Lamborghini V12. He appeared at the Japanese Grand Prix, finishing 12th, and at the Australian Grand Prix, finishing 14th. He scored no championship points.

In the Japanese Touring Car Championship (JTCC) Suzuki drove Nissan Skyline GT-Rs for Impul, winning the 1990 title and finishing third in 1991. He returned to the series in 1993 for Nismo and again finished third.

Suzuki contested multiple seasons of the Japanese Formula 3000 series from the 1980s through the mid-1990s. His best seasons were 1992, when he finished runner-up, and 1995 with Hoshino Racing, when he won the championship — his fourth Japanese title at senior single-seater level — succeeding Marco Apicella as title holder. He also raced in Formula Nippon from 1996 onward without repeating his 1995 success.

In the JGTC (which became Super GT), Suzuki competed from 1994, initially for Team Zexel and Nismo in Nissan Skyline GT-Rs in the GT1 class, finishing third in the 1995 season. From 1997 he moved to Toyota Supra machinery with Toyota Castrol Team TOM'S, achieving a third-place finish in the 1997 GT500 standings. He competed in JGTC through 2000.

In 1996 Suzuki made a single start in the NASCAR Busch Series, driving for Joe Bessey Motorsports at Nazareth Speedway in the Meridian Advantage 200. An accident during the race left him with a concussion and a classified result of 96th place. It remained his sole NASCAR appearance.

Suzuki worked for Nissan as a development test driver, contributing to the development of the R35 Nissan GT-R road car. In 2006 he became director of R&D Sport in Super GT, continuing the team that had previously operated as Direxiv.

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