The tale of Japanese Drivers: Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima

Anyone who has owned Gran Turismo 2, 3 or 4 must be aware of the Suzuki Escudo Pike's Peak version.... with almost 1000 hp it was easily one of the most powerful cars in the game and those with the keenest of eyes would have noticed some interesting facts.

What is this Pike's Peak?

Pike's Peak is a mountain in Colorado. It is famous for being one of the few mountains in the world that you can drive up, straight to the peak. Shortly after the road was built to the peak, a race was organised to advertise it. The race became an annual event held on the 4th of July [later on changed for various reasons]. The track covers 14 miles of road in length and 1.4km in height [hence its nickname "Race to the Clouds"]. Its difficulty has caught the interest of numerous rally champions [and even some F1 champs]. It is one of the top 5 greatest races on American soil [Baja 1000/12hrs of Sebring / Petit Le Mans / 24hrs of Daytona are the other 4].

The Suzuki Escudo I see on the roads are nothing more than fat Gran Vitaras not this beast, how comes?

The Pike's Peak race is famous for having some of the most lenient rules in the racing world. This means that the horsepower figures are ridiculously high and the weight is ridiculously low. It also means that although the race vehicles need to be based on production vehicles, the word "based on" is used loosely and to my knowledge the only that the Escudo Pikes Peak version shares with the road version is the V6 block and the name.

Am I the only one noticing the little "Monster" sticker on the back glass?

Monster is the nickname of the Escudo's creator and pilot, in fact Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima is one of the few Japanese racers that can be endowed with the term pilot. Before I go into the definition of what a pilot is I must first bring up an argument brought up earlier.

Sometime ago on Wheels Jamaica there was a poll asking which country produced the greatest racers, Japan held a steady lead. Now most of these people, I can assume, don't know what they are talking about as the Japanese are yet to win an international racing event, not even one. To be fair to them though, they rarely race outside of Japan so it is hard to compare. So now something I'm trying to do is to pick out each and every Japanese "pilot" [Keiichi Tsuckiya is the only one I highlighted so far]

Monster has been racing the Peak since 1992 in twin engined Suzuki's. The Escudo didn't see the light until 1996, it was soon replaced by an XL7 based racer. Now while winning the Pike's Peak race is good enough to be mentioned among the best but he did more. He went on to establish the Suzuki World Rally Team, Suzuki's only [official] entrant into the world of international racing. He also dominated the New Zealand version of Pike's Peak [called Race to the Sky] winning it an amazing 7 times [out of 9 events]. The icing on the cake however is that tomorrow, June 27th, Monster will be running on the Peak against competitors young enough to be his children. Monster is bucking on the 60 mark and is still breaking racing records, in comparison, the most competitive people in F1 are in their 20s. Due to these accomplishments, Monster has acquired the rank of pilot in my books and go forth tomorrow confident knowing that Jamaica's #1 automotive commentator [lols] listed him as one of his #1 Japanese drivers.......go forth and win this one Mr. Tajima.

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