Gran Turismo Maker - Kazunori Yamauchi

Kazunori Yamauchi (山内 一典, Yamauchi Kazunori^?, born August 5, 1967) is a Japanese game designer, professional racing driver, and most notably, CEO of Polyphony Digital and producer of the Gran Turismo series.^[1] He became the president of Polyphony Digital after designing his first game Motor Toon Grand Prix, a cartoon-inspired racing title similar to Mario Kart. Motor Toon Grand Prix later spawned a sequel, Motor Toon Grand Prix 2, which was the only game in the franchise released outside of Japan. Since then, Yamauchi has fulfilled his dream of creating realistic driving simulators with his massively successful Gran Turismo series. He has also expressed interest in broadening out to other game genres; in 1999 Polyphony Digital released Omega Boost, a shoot 'em up title set in space, which has since proven to be Yamauchi's only foray outside of racing game development.
As a result of Gran Turismo's success, Yamauchi has become an important figure in the worldwide automotive industry. For his help with promoting Volkswagen models in the series, the company gave him a Golf R32.^{[citation needed]}. Polyphony Digital worked with Nissan to design the multifunction display (which relays various pieces of car data to the driver, including G-Force generated, torque distribution and lap times) found in the R35 GT-R.^[2] The car as well as the display itself appear in the latest game in his franchise, Gran Turismo 5.^{[citation needed]} He was given a Nissan GT-R for his contribution.^{[citation needed]}
On a video included with Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, Yamauchi remarked his favorite car design is the Ford GT and he owns two in real life.^[3]
On August 29, 2009, he joined the World Car Awards team participating the SP8 class in race 8 of VLN piloting a Lexus IS-F on the Nürburgring. He clocked a fastest lap of 10 minutes 9 seconds which is the best in the team, and their team recorded a class win.^[4][5] He returned to the Nürburgring track as one of the 4 drivers of Team World Car Award participating in the 24 Hours of Nürburgring 2010 and finished in 4th place in SP8 class.
Kazunori Yamauchi also was one of 4 drivers in the #96 Spoon Sports FD2 Civic Type-R during the 25 Hours Of Thunderhill which took place Dec. 5-6, 2009. The 25 Hours Of Thunderhill race was his first time driving in a US road course. The car placed 7th in its class, and 23rd position overall.
Yamauchi took part in the 24 Hours of Nürburgring 2011 as one of the four drivers of #71 Schulze Motorsport Nissan GT-R. The team finished the race in 36th place overall, achieving a victory in the SP 8T class after overcoming several technical problems.^[6]

Kazunori Yamauchi

Yamauchi at 25 Hours Of Thunderhill 2009
Born	August 5, 1967 (1967-08-05) (age 44) Kashiwa, Chiba, Japan
Occupation	Game designer, professional race driver