Akira Yanagawa
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Akira Yanagawa is a motor cycle racer from Japan, born 15th July 1971. He started racing on mini-bikes before becoming Japan's 250cc champion in 1989. He moved to his homeland's Superbike championship in 1993. By 1997 Kawasaki considered him ready for the World Superbike series.
Initial testing displays [1] and results suggested that they were not wrong. At the A1-Ring, Akira became the first Japanese rider to win a World Superbike race outside his homeland, also winning Sugo later in the year to come 4th overall. 1998 was dominated by 2 huge crashes. At Mugello where the bike hurtled through the gravel before catching fire due to a burst fuel line, with Akira fortunately nowhere near it. At Laguna Seca he was well up the order when Doug Chandler's wild card Kawasaki went out of control on the run into the Corkscrew corner and harpooned Akira. It was a frightening moment, yet Yanagawa only missed one further round. He was classified 2nd in that race, as the restart was abandoned following another pile-up. On his return he took 2 4th places, and followed this with 2 podium results at Sugo. This was good for 7th overall
In 1999 and 2000 he came 5th overall, with a win at Sugo in 1999, and he was 9th in 2001 (although with two 3rds at Monza [2]as Kawasaki gradually lost interest in WSBK, focusing instead on developing a MotoGP bike for 2002 [3]. Yanagawa raced in Japan's Superbike series while testing this, and briefly raced it before returning to a testing role. [4]
