Tokyo - The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., is proud to announce today that cars running on YOKOHAMA tires won the series championships in five of six classes of the Japanese Rally Championship, the nation’s premier rally car competition. YOKOHAMA-equipped cars won the championships in the JN1, JN2, JN4, JN5 and JN6 classes. The performance of the victorious cars was firmly based on the superior performance on gravel of YOKOHAMA’s “ADVAN A053” rally tires as well as the excellent stability of the “ADVAN A050” sports tire on tarmac courses.

In the top-level JN6 class, the championship was won by the ADVAN PIAA Rally Team’s LANCER EVOLUTION X, flashing the red and black ADVAN colors and driven by Fumio Nutahara and Tadayoshi Sato. The team won the second and third races of the series and then wrapped up the championship before the series finale with victories in the sixth and seventh races. Not resting on its laurels, however, the team also won the final race, to finish the series with five victories in nine races. The series championship is the team’s first in five years and its ninth overall.

In the JN5 class, the team of Takuma Kamada and Hakaru Ichino secured the championship with four straight first-place finishes starting from the series’ fourth race. In the JN1 class, veteran drivers Masato Nakanishi and Yuki Mino displayed their experience, remaining stably ahead of the competition and secured the championship in the seventh race of the nine-event series. In the JN4 and JN2 classes, which were added to the series in 2014 to accommodate strictly regulated RPN-category vehicles, the driver teams of Genki Takeuchi/Naoki Kase (JN4) and Nobuyuki Tanaka/Megumi Fujita (JN2) held the top spots throughout the series to capture the first crowns in the two new classes.

Yokohama Rubber is an avid sponsor of motor sports around the world. In addition to being the official supplier of tires for the world’s premier touring car race series, the FIA World Touring Car Championship (WTCC), Yokohama Rubber supports entrants in a wide variety of events, such as rallies, autocrosses, gymkhanas, hill climb races, and rallycrosses. Through its continued support of a the full-range of motor sports at all levels, from world-class events to local races around the world, Yokohama Rubber hopes to raise brand recognition for its YOKOHAMA tires while contributing to the ongoing growth and development of a robust automotive industry and motor sports field.