13/6/1966
Record updated 12-Jun-06
As a blindingly fast national F3 champion, Hattori won the All Japan Formula 3 Championship in 1990 and the All Japan Touring Car Championship in 1993. But, as with many Japanese drivers, his European career was never to lift off.
NaokiHattori.gif He had a brilliant career in Japan, where his series titles included the 1990 All Japan Formula 3 Championship and 1993 All Japan Touring Car Championship.
In 1991 Hattori tried but failed to pre-qualify for 2 Formula One Grands Prix with Coloni and won the Spa-Francorchamps 24 Hour Race.
He raced in Indy Lights in the mid-90, almost making it to the podium during the 1997 Indy Lights season. In the fourth race of the season, at Savannah, he ran his best race of the year, placing fifth after starting seventh from the grid. It was one of four top-10 finishes posted by Hattori in his Indy Lights debut. That included two sixth-place efforts, one of which came at Toronto, where he moved up from 15th on the grid. Hattori's four top-10 finishes enabled him to compile 32 points, for a 16th-place finish in the drivers' standings.
He also drove ChampCars briefly in 1999. In 2000 he went back to race in Japan competing in the Japanese GT Series and in Formula Nippon. He still competes in the Japanese GT Series.