Hiro Matsushita

Matsushita was born in Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture as the youngest son of Masaharu Matsushita, who was the second president of Panasonic for sixteen years from 1961. He graduated from Konan University. His elder brother, Masayuki Matsushita served as a vice chairman of Panasonic for over a decade.

Racing career

Despite being the grandson of the founder of Panasonic, he refused to be labelled as a rich kid who could buy his way into anything. He instead worked his way up from the bottom, starting his career racing motorcycles in his home country between 1977 and 1980, before switching to four wheels. He retired from Motocross racing by becoming Champion in Kansai region in 1980 at the age of 19.

In 1987, Matsushita started racing Formula Fords - the Class A of auto racing - In the following year, he teamed up with Jim Downing in a Camel Lights car and secured a second-place finish in class at the 24 Hours of Daytona and a third-place finish at the 12 Hours of Sebring. In 1989, Matsushita fearlessly entered the Formula Atlantic series and, by the end of that year, he had claimed four victories and the Toyota Atlantic championship (Pacific division) with the largest point margin of all time. He then tried Formula Pacific in New Zealand and became the first Japanese driver to win the prestigious Lady Wigram Trophy Race.

Matsushita graduated to Champ Car in 1990, scoring one point in his debut season. He became the first Japanese driver to race in the Indianapolis 500.

In 1991, and followed that achievement with a top-ten finish at Milwaukee. Matsushita missed the 1992 Indy 500 after suffering a broken leg during a practice crash. He was sidelined for several weeks and missed the next six events.

At the Phoenix race in 1994, Matsushita endured a serious crash when his car was cut in half by Jacques Villeneuve's car travelling at nearly full speed., he escaped with only minor injuries. The same year, he earned his best career finish of 6th position at the Marlboro 500 at Michigan International Speedway. This result was made possible by an extraordinarily high rate of attrition that saw only 8 cars finish the race. Matsushita was 11 laps behind the leader at the drop of the checkered flag.

By the time he retired in 1998, Matsushita had started 117 Champ Car races for Dick Simon Racing, Walker Racing, Arciero/Wells Racing and Payton/Coyne. He holds the record for most starts in American Championship Car Racing history without scoring a Top 5.

In 2001, Matsushita competed in the Baja 1000 off-road race, in a Mitsubishi Montero.

Matsushita resides in San Clemente, California. He has a son called Takayuki Matsushita, who is a lawyer residing in the United States.