PROFILE

Birthday

1970/7/2

Nationalty

Tokyo, Japan

BodySize

H-182cm W-80Kg

BloodType

O+

Favorite

Motor cycle sports

Snowboarding

MTB

Racing History

Jun Mitsuhashi’s first appearance for Nissan was in the Paris Dakar Rally in 2004. He previously participated in the rally’s of 2001, 2002 and rode motorcycle in 2003. Receiving the top private rider prize in 2002 and then placing well as a rider in both domestic Japanese and foreign rallies.

Nissan actively sought Jun Mitsuhashi to drive for them and he had to make the difficult choice to switch from being an amateur to representing a company as a professional driver. In the summer of 2003, he participated in the “NISSAN Young Driver Training Program” held in France. Entering the “Pharaohs Rally” with little practice, this unknown rookie shocked the rally community by coming 9th and then 3rd in the following event, the “Shamrock Rally”.

Entering the Paris Dakar Rally for the first time as a driver for Nissan, he entered in the production category. Although unable to practice beforehand, he maintained second place for his class from an early stage until he had to unfortunately retire due to mechanical failure. However this showing clearly put him on the map and labelled his potential.

More determined than ever by his early progress he went back to the training to further improve his skills. This lead to wining the overall 2nd place in the rally “Desert Express” and then overall 1st place in the “Shamrock Rally”. In his second Paris Dakar rally he won 11th place, coming first amongst Japanese drivers and thus justifying his commitment.

For his third challenge in the Paris Dakar Rally of 2006, he was finally rewarded with entry in the top category, driving a super production machine, NISSAN Pickup. In the Italian Baja, he showed his talent by winning 2nd place in the preliminary without preparation. However, he could not show his ability in full again due to mechanical failure.

After Nissan decided to withdraw from Paris Dakar Rally, Mitsuhashi made a contract with Toyota Auto Body in 2007. Starting afresh, he entered in the production class in a new, based around a team of mostly Japanese engineers. Despite having to acclimatise to a new team and and inexperienced amateur navigator, he was able to beat these supposedly insurmountable odds and won 1st place in his class.

On the back of this success Toyota Auto Body renewed his contract in 2008, with the aim of winning a consecutive Paris Dakar rally. However following rally was cancelled due to political instability in Africa. In 2009, the location of Dakar Rally was moved to the South America and Mitsuhashi entered the race again as a driver for Toyota Auto Body. However this time he had to retire due to mechanical failure.

Mitsuhashi bounced back strongly in 2010, achieving a record of nine successive victories, which resulted in overall 1st place for his class. Then in the 2011 Dakar Rally, he won the production class by an impressive margin and secured an overall 12th place and 1st place in the class for the 3rd time of his career.

2012 and 2013 and the bad luck,　2014 comeback to T2 champion of the Dakar Rally that a time gap of one hour and a half in second place. jun got four wins.

And, jun also won 2015, the total fifth time victory,However, it imposed a strange order to give the 2 car to win from the team. But Jun was ignore it.
Thus, jun was fired the team.Jun look for new field.