Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month: Roger Yasukawa, Racecar Driver

Roger Yasukawa, who has achieved fame as a racecar driver, was born in Los Angeles on October 10, 1977. Yasukawa is of Japanese descent, and he holds dual citizenship in the United States and Japan.

Yasukawa’s launchpad into the world of motorsports involved his participation in highly competitive go-kart races in southern California. He more than held his own while driving open-wheeled, four-wheeled small vehicles in these races. In 1991, Yasukawa won in the Junior Sportsman category of the California State Championship in karting.

Yasukawa officially switched to car racing instead in 1997. He was named Rookie of the Year for his overall performance during the 1999 season of the Barber Dodge Pro Series, open-wheel auto races that were held between 1986 and 2003. Yasukawa’s other milestones while driving behind the wheel included competing in the Indianapolis 500 (also known as the Indy 500) annual automobile race in 2006. Yasukawa, as part of the team Playa Del Racing, drove a G-Force GF09 car (outfitted with a Honda Indy V8 engine) in this event. He ultimately placed 16^th out of 33 drivers in the race and became one of its 10 final classified finishers.

Yasukawa’s more recent involvement in car racing has been focused instead on advocating for and working with still-active drivers in this profession. One of his key accomplishments in this regard was his pivotal role in bringing Spanish racecar driver Álex Palou to the United States and serving as his manager in the IndyCar Series, the country’s highest class of open-wheel car racing. With Yasukawa as his manager, Palou won the 2021 IndyCar Series – a victory that set the stage for his first-place finishes in not only the 2023-25 seasons of this series but also the 2025 Indy 500.

(The accompanying photo of Yasukawa was taken in Japan in 2008.)

Photo Credit: Morio (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)

Additional information on Yasukawa is available at https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/database/drivers/roger-yasukawa/ and https://www.indycar.com/News/2021/10/10-1-Yasukawa-Palou