Masashi Yokoi: Three-Time D1GP Champion Chasing a Fourth (2026)

Ask anyone in a Japanese D1 paddock who the man to beat is in 2026 and you get one name: Masashi Yokoi (横井昌志). The 43-year-old from Aichi is a three-time D1 Grand Prix champion who walked away from the team that made him famous, built a brand-new car under his own banner, and then won five of the first six rounds in it. Overseas fans mostly know him as the blue D-MAX S15, or from one afternoon in Texas in 2015. Everything below is drawn from D1’s official pages, the Japan Automobile Federation, his own shop’s site and a September 2026 interview, checked on 1 October 2026.

How did a street-legal S14 driver become champion?

Yokoi did not arrive through a factory programme. D1’s official profile records him competing since 2007 with 25 years of drifting behind him, which puts his first slides in the early 2000s on the roads and small tracks of Aichi. His D1 debut came in D1 Street Legal, the series’ second tier for road-registered cars (tsuiso, the tandem chase battle, is judged the same way, the cars just carry number plates), and he ran it in his own S14 Silvia. Japanese fan histories record his first D1SL event win at Tsukuba in 2009 and the D1SL championship in 2012, the same year he joined D-MAX, the Aichi tuning house whose blue S15 he would drive for the next 14 seasons.

The Grand Prix years took longer to come good. His first D1GP event win came at Ebisu in 2014, the year he finished third overall. He was runner-up to Hideyuki Fujino in 2017 with two wins, and then, in 2018, D1’s own season history records his long-awaited first title: 166 points and three event wins, at Autopolis, Tokachi and Ebisu. He defended it in 2019 by winning both Tsukuba rounds, which made him only the second driver after Youichi Imamura to hold the title in consecutive seasons. Two more runner-up finishes followed in 2020 (when he also won the solo-run series, per the official ranking) and 2021, before a third championship in 2022 on 150 points, confirmed in the JAF’s season notice.

Why do fans call him Zombie Yokoi?

Japanese drifting hands out nicknames the way other sports hand out statistics, and Yokoi has collected three. Zombie Yokoi (ゾンビ横井) goes back to a 2007 D1 Street Legal weekend at Ebisu, where fan histories record him crashing repeatedly in practice, repairing the car each time and still lining up for the main event. Kyoken (狂犬, the mad dog) is for the way he chases in tandem. Galaxy Yokoi (ギャラクシー横井) came after the 2015 Texas win described below, and it is the one D1 chose to print on his official profile.

The driving behind the nicknames is easier to describe than most, because he described it himself in a September 2026 interview with autosport web:

“Lately my own style is a run with sharp contrast and real speed, and the sharpness of the drift initiation.”

「最近は特にメリハリのあるスピード感のある走りとドリフトの振りの鋭さが僕独特のスタイル」

He added that the initiation sector is the one he never compromises on, and the one he wants spectators to watch. If you have only ever seen D1 on a phone, that is the thing to look for trackside: how late and how hard the S14 is thrown into the first clip.

What happened when he went to America?

In 2015 D-MAX took the S15 to Formula Drift USA, and at Round 6, Texas Motor Speedway, Yokoi won the event as a series rookie, beating Chris Forsberg in the final. Motorsport.com’s report from the night quotes him on what he had crossed the Pacific to do:

“I wanted to come out and show the Japanese style of driving.”

It was a single-season programme rather than a career move, which is why he is not on the FD USA all-time lists the way Daigo Saito is, but the win mattered at home. D1’s official profile today lists “Galaxy Yokoi” as his nickname, and that is where it came from. For the fuller story of the one Japanese driver who did stay and win the American title, read our Daigo Saito profile.

What cars is he famous for?

Three Silvias, in the end. Every line below is checked against D1’s official profile and ranking pages or his own team’s material, with the fan-sourced detail flagged as such:

One detail Japanese fans like to point out: for most of the S15 years he ran a cable-operated handbrake, the same type as the road car, and only switched to a hydraulic unit in 2024 to match teammate Yuki Tano’s set-up. In a series where most cars have had hydraulic handbrakes for a decade, it says something about how little he needed one.

D1 broke the news of the S14 itself, on its official X account, in February 2026:

If the S14 shape is the reason you are reading this, our Nissan Silvia S14 buyer’s guide covers what a clean street chassis costs in Japan now, and the S15 guide does the same for the car he won three titles in.

Why is the team called Mind Control Racing SHIBATIRE?

Because the tyre is the title sponsor, and the choice says a lot about where Japanese drifting’s money sits in 2026. SHIBATIRE (シバタイヤ) is a young Japanese brand, founded around 2021 by Shibata Jidosha in Sakahogi, Gifu, about an hour from Yokoi’s shop. The tyres are specified by Shibata and built in China by Rydanz, a division of labour both companies have described in print; the sources are listed on our SHIBATIRE directory entry. The drift product is the R23 in the 240 compound, which the maker itself calls the compound best suited to a drift rear, listed at ¥14,850 (about US$93) per 265/35ZR18 tyre, tax included, when we checked on 14 September 2026.

Yokoi’s move is bigger than a sponsor logo. Japanese fan histories record him testing the brand as early as 2023, while still contracted elsewhere, and in 2026 he put its name on his own team. At Tsukuba we counted the tyre column of the official entry list: 18 of the 39 starters were on VALINO and 7 on SHIBATIRE, with Toyo, Dunlop and Yokohama sharing 10. The 2026 title fight is even an in-house affair, because Koudai Sobagiri’s SHIBATA RACING TEAM is the brand’s own works entry, so first and second in the standings are on the same rubber.

For overseas readers the catch is that SHIBATIRE sells only through its own Japanese shop, with no English site and domestic payment methods only. How to buy SHIBATIRE outside Japan walks through the compounds and how a set leaves the country.

What went wrong in 2023, and how did he answer?

The 2023 season is the gap in an otherwise relentless record. He won the opening round at Okuibuki, then the official ranking shows two zeros at Rounds 3 and 4: Japanese fan histories record a tyre-regulation breach that cost him the points from that Tsukuba weekend, and he finished the year eighth on 74 points.

The answer was a tyre change. D-MAX moved to Toyo for 2024, and at that April’s Round Zero exhibition at Fuji Speedway he won outright. D1’s official report quotes him on the new rubber:

“With the switch to Toyo Tires, today I really felt they are a serious weapon for me.”

「タイヤがトーヨータイヤさんになったんで、ぼくに関してはかなりの武器だと今日は実感しました」

The points seasons were steadier than spectacular: fifth in 2024 on 108, and fifth again in 2025 on 110, with third in the solo-run series, per the official rankings. 2025 was also his last year in D-MAX blue. As autosport web put it in September 2026, he left the team he had been with for years and formed his own, Mind Control Racing SHIBATIRE, switching from the S15 to an S14 at the same time.

What is Mind Control Racing, and what is MCR Factory?

The team name is the shop name. MCR Factory sits at 8 Ufukuji Nakairi, Kitanagoya, Aichi, in the flat commuter country north of Nagoya, and D1’s official profile lists Yokoi’s day job as its representative. The shop’s own page gives opening hours of 11:00 to 20:00, closed on Wednesdays and on event days, with a Japanese-language phone line, and it builds and maintains the race cars as well as customer street cars.

It is also where the next generation is being made. Japanese fan histories describe him running a development programme for young drivers through D1 Lights and Formula Drift Japan, and in the same September 2026 interview he framed his own role in a way few 43-year-olds in any sport would:

“I am 43 now and becoming one of the old guard, but I also chair the drivers’ association, so I am someone with the leadership to pull Japan along.”

「もう43歳で、大御所になってきましたが…選手会長もやっていて日本を引っ張っていけるリーダーシップ性も持っている人間」

KS Factory, one of the new team’s partners, followed him through the Tsukuba double-header with a camera crew and released it as a three-part documentary from 7 August 2026. Part one is the best 20 minutes of Yokoi on video for anyone who does not speak Japanese: the paddock, the car and the face before a run tell most of the story.

▶ D1GP documentary vol.1: Champion Masashi Yokoi on the resolve to win KS Factory · team partner's official channel click to load from youtube

How is his 2026 season going?

Better than any season he has had, and in a car that did not exist a year ago. This is the official D1 ranking as it stood on 1 October 2026, with Rounds 1 to 6 counted:

Four weekends, five wins and one zero. Our round reports have the full brackets: Aichi, Tsukuba and Ebisu. His nearest rival, Sobagiri, has not won a round yet but has scored at every one; the only thing that has beaten Yokoi in 2026 is a tyre bead. The man he beat in both Tsukuba finals, Naoki Nakamura, is the one driver on the grid with as many recent titles, and we profiled him here: Naoki Nakamura.

Asked what a fourth title would be for, his answers in the September interview were about the sport rather than himself:

“I want to become a driver who can pull Japan along.”

「日本を引っ張っていけるドライバーになっていきたい」

“I want to make sure we can keep up with the world.”

「世界についていけるようにしたいと思っています」

Where can you see him drive?

The season resumes at Autopolis in Oita on 24 and 25 October 2026 with Rounds 7 and 8, and an 18-point lead is not a safe one in a series where a bead failure zeroes a weekend. Our D1GP Autopolis 2026 ticket and access guide has the prices and the car-only access problem, and the 2026 event calendar lists every remaining D1 date. If you are choosing between series for a first trip, the D1GP vs Formula Drift Japan guide explains how the tickets and formats differ.