Happy Birthday Aguri Suzuki

- Published on Sep 8th, 2010 by Riccardo Monza

Happy Birthday to Aguri Suzuki, former F1 driver and founder of the Super Aguri F1 team, who's 50 today! Aguri was born in Tokyo, Japan on 8th September 1960. Kick-starting his driving career in 1972 with karts, he did rather well in that before progressing up through Japanese F3, touring cars, Japanese F2, and winning the Japanese F3000 title before having a bash at F1 in 1988, in a Larousse at Suzuka. Failing to pre-qualify in a slow Zakspeed for all the races in 1989, the following year brought a lot more cheer as he finished in third spot at his home race Suzuka! This fine result was the highest that an Asian driver had ever achieved up to that point. Sadly this was to be the high point of Aguri's driving career, as stints at Footwork, Jordan and Ligier failed to bring as much success.

Displaying gritted teeth in the photo above, Aguri sprays the local fans with champagne after his triumphant third place at Suzuka in 1990. He later took this same grit and determination into entering his own F1 team -Super Aguri, with the aid of Honda engines in 2006. Unfortunately, after just two and a bit seasons racing and finding their feet, the team experienced severe cash problems, resigning Aguri's red and white cars to be parked in the garage for good. Though there had been a couple of good results in Takuma Sato's sixth place in Canada in 2007, along with an eighth spot in Spain a month before.

Despite Aguri's "official" announcement in 2009 that he won't be entering Super Aguri in F1 again, we do hope to see him with gritted teeth involved in the sport again at some level, despite saying in recent years that he intends to retire from the sport at 50 -which would seem to be today in fact. Nevermind! Let's hope he has a change of heart! Happy Birthday Aguri!