As one of only four FIA's world championship series, the FIA World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) is very popular among motor racing fans around the globe.
The sprint races fought by the production car based FIA Super 2000/Diesel 2000 race cars are characterized by very tough and aggressive competition in which ADVAN has been the sole tire supplier of the series for years.

The first Japanese WTCC round was held at Okayama International Circuit in 2008 and strongly impressed the Japanese motor sport fans with its hotly fought battles which are sometimes called as "a combat on race tracks."

The following year, 2009, the event returned to the same venue and, although it was hit by rain again, its vigorous racing drew even more attention of fans. After these two events, WTCC has been certainly well recognized in this country.

And again this year, WTCC will visit Japan for the third time to hold "FIA WTCC Race of Japan" in the last weekend of October - the final on October 31st.
Recently, the line-up of Japanese drivers who will take part in the Japanese round was announced, which should be of high interest to the fans. Nobuteru Taniguchi, who is well known as a regular driver in the Super GT and Super Taikyu series, will drive a BMW 320si entered by Scuderia Proteam Motorsport which he drove for last year's event.
Another top-line driver, Masataka Yanagida, will make his WTCC debut with a Wiechers-Sport's BMW 320si.

Yukinori Taniguchi, one of the star drivers in the Honda Civic One-make series, will come back to WTCC with a Bamboo-Engineering's Chevrolet Lacetti after a year's absence.
And Liqui Moly Team Engstler will enter a WTCC debutant, Yoshihiro Ito, who has a good track record in Japanese junior formulae such as FJ1600 and F4, in one of their BMW 320sis.

WTCC has earned the reputation of being one of the hottest and toughest race series of the world. With the expectation that those four Japanese drivers will perform well, FIA WTCC Race of Japan will certainly be the most notable motor sport event this fall.

■Shigeo Komatsu, Operating Officer, Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd.

"Yokohama Rubber has been the WTCC's official tire supplier since 2006 and the Portuguese round in early July this year marked the 100th event for us as the tire supplier.

"The venue of the round, Portimao, is a resort area located about 250km south from Lisbon and it offers a beautiful shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean, delicious seafood and splendid wines. The track of Autodromo do Algarve has a hilly layout just like the old Nurburgring or Spa Francorchamps, which meant, especially in combination with the fine weather on the race day, the tires were exposed to quite difficult conditions.

"On top of this, as you know, the teams tend to set up their cars to stretch the performance of the tires to the limit. As a result, the tires were squealing everywhere around the track but they withstood throughout our 100th race well without any problem.

"As you know, the front wheel drive cars from SEAT and Chevrolet and the rear wheel drive cars from BMW compete against each other in WTCC but we only supply the same single specification tires for the teams, regardless of the chassis layout of the cars they use.

"In addition to this fact, the teams always try to set up the cars just on the limit, which sometimes creates very tough conditions for tires. Given such background, it is a great honor for us to be appointed as the official tire supplier of the series for as long as five years.

"This year's Japanese round will be the third visit of WTCC to the country. For the last two years, we had rain on the race days and some interesting races were provided due to the rain. But I would cross my fingers for good weather this year.

"And we will have four top-line Japanese drivers in this year's event. I also hope to see impressive performances displayed by each of them."