Nirei Fukuzumi (福住仁嶺, Fukuzumi Nirei, born 24 January 1997) is a Japanese racing driver affiliated with Toyota Gazoo Racing who currently competes in Super GT for ROOKIE Racing and in Super Formula for KCMG. He won the GT300 class championship in Super GT in 2019, driving for ARTA alongside series veteran Shinichi Takagi, and is a race winner in the GP3 Series and Super Formula.
Fukuzumi comes from a rather unusual background for a racing driver; his father Shūhō is the chief priest of Sanbōin, a Shingon Buddhist temple in his hometown of Ishii.[1]
Career
Karting
Fukuzumi drove a kart for the first time at the age of 5 and began his karting career in 2006. He remained in karting until 2013, finishing second to Ukyo Sasahara in the All-Japan Junior Karting Championship in 2009 and concluding his career by taking the All-Japan Karting Championship title in the top-level KF1 class in 2013.[2] He also made a handful of appearances internationally, most notably finishing second in the ROK Cup International Final in 2012.
Lower formulae
In 2014, he began to compete in open-wheel racing, moving up to Japanese F3 the next year. He won four races and finished fourth in the standings.
GP3 Series
In 2016, Nirei débuted in the GP3 Series with ART Grand Prix,[3] scoring three podium finishes and finishing seventh in the championship. Fukuzumi stayed on for another season of GP3 in 2017.[4] He racked up two victories, both coming at feature races, and ended up third in the standings, only behind teammates George Russell and Jack Aitken. In 2017, he was part of McLaren Young Driver Programme as he's part of Honda Junior Program.
The Japanese driver made his Formula 2 debut in 2018 with BWT Arden,[5] partnering Maximilian Günther. In that season, he managed to join Red Bull Junior Team. Fukuzumi scored a total of 17 points, finishing 17th, three positions behind Günther in the championship. After this unfortunate season, Red Bull dropped him from the Academy.
While the main focus was to race in Formula 2 for 2018, Fukuzumi competed in Super Formula with Team Mugen for 4 rounds.[5] After 3 seasons in Europe, Fukuzumi returned to Japan, and competed in Super Formula with Dandelion Racing.[6] Fukuzumi had his best season by far, managed to claim runners up in the standings for Super Formula with 2 wins & 1 pole to his name in that season. For 2022, Fukuzumi moves from Front runner Dandelion Racing to Drago Corse for Super Formula, while for Super GT stays with ARTA.[7] In 2023, Fukuzumi continues to stay at Drago Corse where the team rebranded as Threebond Racing. Fukuzumi continues to do well in Threebond where collecting couple of points, and qualiflying to Q2 very often, with 16th place.
Fukuzumi left Honda after being contracted by the manufacturer since his junior years, to join Toyota and drive the No. 8 entry for KCMG alongside Kamui Kobayashi.[8]
Super GT
Fukuzumi make his Super GT debut in GT300 Class with ARTA as Shinichi Takagi's teammate.[6] In that season, he managed to claim the Super GT GT300 Title, while in Super Formula full debut managed to get 7th place in the standings.
In 2020, he stayed with the same team but promoted to GT500 class in Super GT with Tomoki Nojiri as his teammate. For 2021, He stays with the same team in both series. And in 2021 with 1 win both Nojiri Fukuzumi clinched runners up place. Fukuzumi continues to compete in Super GT with ARTA, but this time he moves to the new 16 car after ARTA work together with Mugen Team where he paired with Hiroki Otsu.[9][10] Meanwhile Fukuzumi, and Otsu claimed their car number 16 maiden win, alongside 3 podiums, and a pole position. Both of them initially fight for the title, but fall short where they end up outside the Top 3, and ended up in 4th place.
† As Fukuzumi was a guest driver, he was ineligible to score championship points.
** The FC class was a class using modified Formula Challenge Japan's FC106 chassis and running with the JAF Formula 4's "C" class, an upper grade class. So, there were neither pole position nor fastest lap.[11]
Complete Japanese Formula 3 Championship results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)
† Driver did not finish, but was classified as he completed over 90% of the race distance. †† As Fukuzumi was a guest driver, he was ineligible to score championship points. ‡ Half points awarded as less than 75% of race distance was completed.
Complete Super Formula results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)
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