Rallying fans all over the world awoke to the sad news of former World Rally Championship driver Kenjiro Shinozuka’s death on the morning of Monday, March 18, 2024.
As a two-time World Rally and one-time Dakar winner, the Japanese legend’s statistics speak for themselves. But the numbers are only the beginning of the great man’s legacy in the sport of rallying, and beyond.
Shinozuka’s driving career will be forever remembered for its association with Mitsubishi. The Toyko native joined the Japanese brand in 1971, but not as a driver. Having initially worked as a salesman and mechanic, Shinozuka was able to pull off an unlikely switch into the driver’s seat of a rally car. Domestic success quickly followed, as did a trip to Kenya for his first WRC event in 1976, where he drove a Mitsubishi Lancer on the grueling Safari Rally.
On that event, Shinozuka had the honor of becoming the first Japanese driver to start a WRC round; a significant achievement at a time when few Japanese drivers competed on the international scene. The rally would also establish the Mitsubishi driver as an endurance rallying specialist, a reputation he’d retain for the rest of his career.
Fast forward 12 years and Shinozuka had achieved significant success in Asia, culminating in the 1988 FIA Asia Pacific Rally Championship title. After securing that championship, the Japanese driver would partner with the man who’d be his co-driver for his greatest WRC moments: John Meadows.
Despite the cultural differences, the Shinozuka-Meadows partnership immediately clicked.
“Our first event was Rally GB [in 1988],” Meadows recalled to DirtFish. “Shinozuka’s car was run by Ralliart Japan – not Ralliart Europe – so 90% of the team were Japanese, which was certainly something different for me. But I’d heard Kenjiro wanted a co-driver with a northern [English] accent, as he could understand the harsher vowels of that accent better.
“Clearly he’d put some thought into it. You need to be able to understand your co-driver, and he felt the northern accent like mine was better for him. But the pace notes were always really good with him; we only ever had a contract for one event at a time and we were together [in the WRC] for five years, so the relationship obviously worked.”
Shinozuka’s careful choice of co-driver was a sign of things to come for the Lancastrian; his new driver was a man who thought everything through and left no stone unturned in trying to find extra performance where he could.
Shinozuka and the Mitusbishi Galant VR-4 were a potent combination
“I’ve called [pacenotes] for lots of different drivers over my time,” recalls Meadows, “but the thing I remember about him was he was really even-tempered. Whether things were going well, or things were going badly, he was always pretty calm and cool. He was quite a thoughtful guy.
“His driving style wasn’t flat out all the time, he was at 99%, and he used to be quite protective of the car. So we ended up in the latter two or three years [of our partnership] really concentrating on the African events (Safari Rally and Ivory Coast Rally). His ability to preserve the car was coming to the fore more than outright speed.
“We used to spend a lot of time in Africa practicing for those rallies, and Kenjiro was a really hard worker, so doing the recce with him was seven days a week, starting at five o’clock in the morning and going until it goes dark every day. But that was fine by me, I’m of that mind as well.
“Even in the early days, Shinozuka knew what was what,” he added. “He knew he wouldn’t be as quick as the others competitors during the daytime driving, but the night stages between one and five o’clock in the morning were where we knew we could make up time, as everyone else would be just trying to survive.
“So we put a lot of effort into practicing at night because he knew that would be his strength. And of course, that was fine with me as I come from a road rallying background, so I was used to competing at night.”
Shinozuka made the Ivory Coast his rallying home away from home in the WRC
The intense preparation the duo put in prior to the WRC’s African events meant Shinozuka was able to fully focus on driving once the rallies got underway. That’s where the trust the Japanese driver had built up with his British counterpart really paid off.
“Some drivers want to know a lot about what’s going on, whether it’s the service plan or whatever, they want to have some input,” commented Meadows. “He just completely relied on me, and it was just a case of ‘Right, what time do we need to meet up in the morning and what do I need John’, and then he just got on with it.
“So that trust we’d built up was great. He was really, really, good to work with.”
All that practice, and earned trust, would eventually pay off as the pair would score their maiden WRC victory on the 1991 Ivory Coast Rally, aboard a factory Mitsubishi Galant VR-4. In doing so, Shinozuka became the first, and so far the only, Japanese driver to win a WRC event. While that was already a major accomplishment for the then-43-year-old, to achieve glory for Mitsubishi after over 20 years as a company man, made the win even sweeter.
“He was really well thought of in the organization, and he was quite a senior employee I think,” commented Meadows. “He was really well known in Japan already, but he obviously got even bigger after that win. The team told me at the next event that we were on posters all over Japan. They said, ‘Do you know you’re famous in Japan, John? You’re on these posters everywhere’, which was strange.
Shinozuka scored another outright WRC podium later in his career at the 1994 Safari Rally; he then finished second again a year later, when it was a WRC 2-Liter Cup event
“It was a big deal to him, that win. The Ivory Coast was a really tough event to win, and we worked hard for it, so that was nice.”
The duo repeated their win in 1992, which gave them both the honor of being the final WRC winners in the Ivory Coast to date. That season also spelled the end of the Shinozuka – Meadows partnership, but not the end of the Japanese star’s history-making habit.
Having already started his brilliant Dakar career in 1986, Shinozuka achieved another first for Japanese motorsport as he became the first man from Japan to win motorsport’s most grueling event in 1997. And of course, that too came behind the wheel of Mitsubishi, as he steered his Pajero to victory in the Sahara desert.
After 22 Dakar starts, and having achieved an incredible 21 stage victories and seven podium finishes, Shinozuka finally hung up his helmet after the 2007 edition, aged 59.
After dedicating himself to supporting young Japanese drivers, and funding philanthropic projects in Africa in his later years, he made an incredible return to the Sahara in the 2019 Africa Eco Race, a rally raid event held on the route of the original Dakar.
Shinozuka passed away on Monday March 18, aged 75.
