Sato began in Asian karting before moving to Europe for the 2006 Formula BMW UK season with Rowan Motorsport, finishing tenth. He improved to fourth in 2007 with Nexa Racing, recording one win, one pole position, and one fastest lap. Returning to Japan, he finished runner-up in the 2008 Formula Challenge Japan with NDDP Racing — the Nismo-affiliated development programme — then placed second in the 2009 All-Japan Formula Three National Class and fourth in 2010, both with Team Nova.
Back in Europe, Sato joined Motopark Academy for the 2011 Formula 3 Euro Series, finishing tenth overall from 27 races with one win and two podiums. He raised his level considerably in 2012, finishing third in the German Formula Three Championship with Motopark's Lotus-branded entry: four wins, three poles, seven fastest laps, and twelve podiums across the season. That result, just behind the top two finishers, established him as a genuine front-runner in European formula racing.
Sato joined Euronova Racing for the 2013 Auto GP season, finishing second in the championship with five wins and nine podiums from 16 races. That same year, Sauber invited him to participate in the Formula One Young Driver Test at Silverstone, where he set the thirteenth fastest time on the third day and finished 25th overall among 31 participating drivers. The test represented the peak of his F1-adjacent exposure.
He returned to Euronova for 2014 and won the Auto GP Drivers' Championship with six wins, one pole, seven fastest laps, and ten podiums from twelve starts — the definitive achievement of his single-seater career and a demonstration of the consistent pace he had shown across three seasons in the series.
Alongside his 2014 Auto GP campaign, Sato entered the GP2 Series with Campos Racing, completing the full 20-race calendar. He scored two championship points, with his best results a seventh place at Sochi and a twelfth at Monza, finishing 27th overall. The dual-programme season — running Auto GP and GP2 simultaneously — reflected the intensity of his single-seater push before the transition to GT racing.
From 2015 Sato settled into a long Super GT campaign in the GT300 class. He spent four seasons from 2015 to 2018 with JLOC, racing Lamborghini GT3 machinery, with his best result a second place at Autopolis in 2018. He moved to Tsuchiya Engineering in 2019 for a Toyota 86 MC programme, then joined Hoppy Team Tsuchiya from 2020, initially racing a Porsche 911 GT3 R before transitioning to a Toyota GR Supra GT300. That programme continued through subsequent seasons, establishing him as one of the more durable GT300 campaigners in the series over more than a decade.
His FIA Silver categorisation, applied from 2023, places him between the Platinum tier of full-time factory-backed professionals and the Bronze tier of amateur competitors, reflecting his accumulated career record at a professional but non-factory level.
Alongside Super GT, Sato has been a regular Super Taikyu Series competitor across multiple classes. He won the ST-4 class title with TOM'S Spirit in 2019. As of 2026 he was competing in the Super Taikyu ST-Z class with Team ZeroOne and in the GT World Challenge Asia with Team 5ZIGEN.
Sato's path from Formula BMW through European formula racing, an Auto GP title, a GP2 campaign, and more than a decade as a Super GT front-runner encompasses more than 270 race starts, over 20 wins, and more than 60 podiums across all championships. His career represents a well-travelled trajectory for Japanese drivers of his generation: European single-seater development followed by a sustained professional career in Japan's premier sportscar series.
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