On February 11th, Dome officially announced its team structure for the 2009 season at the Honda Welcome Plaza Aoyama in Tokyo. The team revealed its new collaboration with YOSHIKI, the leader of a popular rock band “X JAPAN,” for the season which they will compete with new team name of “TEAM YOSHIKI & DOME PROJECT.” Ryo Michigami and Takashi Kogure will continue their combination from last year’s No. 18 car. Major names from the worlds of racing and rock match up strong to crown the SUPER GT title.
YOSHIKI and X JAPAN are also known for their passion for cars and motorsports and have sponsored a formula racing team in the past. President of Dome, Minoru Hayashi, explained how the collaboration all came to a light and its goal, “YOSHIKI loves cars very much, and when we were just talking, it kept on going and going and we ended up saying ‘Let’s do it!’ Of course, our goal is to win, but, also, we would like to take a part in stimulating motorsports in this depression.”
The team will enter the series as “ROCK STAR DOME NSX” this season and their No.18 NSX will have pint job of the energy drink that YOSHIKI is involved as the producer, “ROCK STAR,” on the body.
“DOME was the super car of my dream when I was a kid. I am very excited to be able to race together with ‘that’ DOME. We became series champion when I was involved with the formula racing, so I want to win again,” commented YOSHIKI. Michigami responded to YOSHIKI’s comment with a confident by saying, “We will win!”
YOSHIKI and his band are right in the midst of their world tour this year, and the announcement was scheduled during his short stay in Japan on the way to the USA from Hong Kong, but he said he will attend as many SUPER GT events as he can in spite of his busy schedule. The band man added that his first SUPER GT appearance would be the second round in Suzuka (4/18 – 19) since the band has a concert during the weekend of the opening round.
When asked about 2009 NSX, Michigami commented, “The (technical) regulation has been revised this year, so the performance of the car has gone down compared to last year with less downforce. We are giving the maximum effort in the given situation to see if we can pull out similar performance as last year. The machine feels good overall.”
“The car is a bit more nervous than last year’s model, but it’s getting better after a number of testing. We assume the car will be in satisfying package by the season opener,” Kogure complemented his teammate.
Source : GTA