16 Facts About Keiichi Tsuchiya

Keiichi Tsuchiya is a Japanese professional race car driver.

Keiichi Tsuchiya is known as the Drift King for his nontraditional use of drifting in non-drifting racing events and his role in popularizing drifting as a motorsport.

Keiichi Tsuchiya was a consultant for the popular manga and anime series, Initial D, in which he makes several cameos.

Keiichi Tsuchiya served as a stunt coordinator and stuntman on The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, where he made a cameo appearance.

Keiichi Tsuchiya started his career through the Fuji Freshman series in 1977.

Keiichi Tsuchiya would continue to take part in the Japanese Formula Three Championship, Japanese Touring Car Championship, the latter while driving a Cosmo Oil Sierra Cosworth and Nissan Skyline GT-R in the Group A championships and later a Honda Civic in the Supertouring car championships.

Keiichi Tsuchiya went on to score a class win and an 8th place overall at the 1995 24 Hours of Le Mans in a Honda NSX.

Keiichi Tsuchiya has raced in NASCAR-sanctioned exhibition races at Suzuka Circuit and at Twin Ring Motegi Superspeedway for the 1998 NASCAR-sanctioned exhibition and 1999 NASCAR Grand National Division, AutoZone West Series races at the circuit, both named the Coca-Cola 500K.

When Keiichi Tsuchiya was a freshman in circuit racing, he was about to get his racing license suspended because of the illegal racing he was recording for Pluspy.

Keiichi Tsuchiya owned the aftermarket company Kei Office until he sold the business in the end of 2005 to form DG-5.

Keiichi Tsuchiya is a guest presenter in Video Option alongside fellow racing drivers Manabu Orido and Nobuteru Taniguchi, a monthly video magazine, similar to Hot Version except regularly covers the D1GP and its sister video magazine Drift Tengoku which deals purely with drifting.

Keiichi Tsuchiya has been an editorial supervisor on the televised anime Initial D and Wangan Midnight.

Keiichi Tsuchiya appeared in the semi biographical film Shuto Kousoku Trial 2,3,4,5, and 6 was featured in the Super GT magazine show in Japan.

Keiichi Tsuchiya makes a number of cameos in the series: in the First Stage, he briefly converses with Takumi's father, Bunta; in the Third Stage, a motorcycle rider wearing a similar racing suit overtakes Takumi as he was en route to an invitation battle with Ryosuke Takahashi; and in the Final Stage, he meets Takumi in person while the latter spectates a circuit race in the end credits.

Keiichi Tsuchiya made an appearance opposite Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson in a Motorworld in Japan special showing drifting competition in the mid 1990s in Japan.

Keiichi Tsuchiya would act as one of the main judges for several important races in the King of Europe ProSeries, being called in as a guest representative throughout the years.