Japanese
The climb
Hiyu Yamakoshi (born 13 October 2006 in Itabashi, Tokyo) is part of the steady stream of Japanese talent now testing itself against Europe's toughest junior ladder. Unusually for a driver from Japan, his single-seater career has been almost entirely European from the outset. After a karting grounding that included a runner-up finish in the 2020 All-Japan FS125 series and an outing in the 2022 CIK-FIA European Championship, he skipped the domestic Japanese ladder and went straight abroad.
In 2023 he juggled three F4 programmes at once - French, Spanish and UAE - taking fifth in the competitive French F4 with multiple podiums. The 2024 season confirmed the upward trajectory: third overall in the Italian F4 Championship with two wins and 220 points, and fourth in the parallel Euro 4 series with two more victories. That earned a graduation to the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine in 2025 with Van Amersfoort Racing, where he scored two podiums and finished ninth - solid, if not yet spectacular.
Formula 3
His 2026 promotion to the FIA Formula 3 Championship kept him with Van Amersfoort Racing, making it his third consecutive season under the Dutch team's banner - a continuity he prized. He called the step-up the realisation of a long-held ambition: "It's something I've dreamt about for a long time. So I'm super excited and super happy," he said of the move that put him on Formula 1 race weekends for the first time.
2026 / current season
The rookie campaign quickly delivered drama. At the Monaco sprint race Yamakoshi started from reverse-grid pole and crossed the line first - what would have been a fairytale maiden F3 win in the principality. But the celebration was undone in the stewards' room: VAR had fitted the front push rods on the wrong sides, breaching the technical regulations, and he was disqualified, the victory passing to Gerrard Xie. It was a brutal way to lose a first win. He answered in the best possible fashion at Barcelona, charging to second in the feature race behind Theophile Nael for a genuine career-best F3 result that proved the Monaco pace had been no fluke. As of mid-2026 Yamakoshi is establishing himself as one of the more promising rookies on the grid, his speed beyond doubt even if the breakthrough win is still owed to him.