OREANDA-NEWS. The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., announced that it would establish Yokohama Motorsports International Co., Ltd., a company specialized in governing development/supply and overall activities for racing tires, on April 1, 2013. Headed by Tetsuya Kuze (Director and Corporate Officer of Yokohama Rubber) as President, the new company will be headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo and capitalized at 10 million yen wholly invested by Yokohama Rubber. With approximate 20 employees, it plans to begin a full-fledged operation in July this year.

In order to strengthen its tire technological development capability and promote tire sales, Yokohama Rubber is actively unfolding motorsports activities in Japan and overseas. In recent years in particular, the company has been enhancing tire supply to and support activity for races and rallies held in Europe, North America and Asia, including SUPER GT series in Japan and FIA World Touring Car Championship (WTCC), so as to make YOKOHAMA rooted as a global brand.

In the past, Yokohama Rubber has been engaged in motorsports activities through its 2 separate divisions: technology division that plans, develops and designs racing tires suited to racing conditions and planning division that takes responsibility for negotiation and contract with race organizers and teams, circuit events and public relations/advertisement activities. However, the company has decided to integrate the 2 divisions into an independent new company to continue to further strengthen and sustain motorsports activities by building a stronger, streamlined organization able to make quicker decisions.

For the time being, Yokohama Motorsports International plans, develops, designs racing tires and takes responsibility for negotiation and contracting with racing organizers and teams as well as for supplying racing tires, in the form of commissioned work from Yokohama Rubber. In the future, the new company plans to expand businesses by providing expert technology and knowhow through the development of consumer tires based on racing tire technology and the proposal on international motorsports plans highly effective in information development.