Future of Speed: Racing Intelligence
Speed has always meant more than movement. It is timing, instinct, engineering, and the relentless drive to go faster, smarter, and further. Future of Speed brings that energy into one room to explore what happens when racing meets technology and where that intersection is headed next.
We will begin with brief introductions, followed by a presentation from Checkmate AI to set the stage for a deeper conversation on the tools, data, and ideas shaping modern racing.
SPEAKERS
The discussion will then move into a panel featuring:
Red Bull — Ukyo Sasahara
Red Bull Athlete | Super GT & Super Formula Driver, TOM'S Toyota
Sasahara has demonstrated a commitment to excellence and a passion for motorsport, earning recognition as a Red Bull athlete and continuing to make significant strides in both Super GT and Super Formula competitions.
He began karting aged seven, won the Formula 3 Asia Championship and Porsche Carrera Cup Japan in 2019, and now competes for Toyota Gazoo Racing. One of the most internationally experienced Japanese drivers on the grid — and one of the few who can speak to what AI-driven performance data feels like from inside the cockpit.
McLaren Japan — Yoshihiro Masamoto
Head of Japan, McLaren Automotive
Masamoto brings over 35 years of experience in the automotive industry — spanning manufacturer, distributor, dealer operations and direct sales — across US, German, British and Japanese enterprises.
As the person who represents McLaren's brand and motorsport identity in Japan, he sits at the exact intersection of performance culture and market strategy that Future of Speed was built around.
TOM'S Racing —Tetsuya Fujimoto
Head of Advanced Technology Development Division
Fujimoto leads the Advanced Technology Development Division at TOM'S — Japan's most decorated racing outfit — 11 Super GT championships, 6 Super Formula titles, and a legacy stretching back to 1974 as the factory-backed development arm of Toyota Gazoo Racing.
Fujimoto's work sits at the intersection of simulation engineering and next-generation racing, overseeing the development of racing simulators and EV race car technology. With a background in automotive product development and a career-long obsession with bringing sim technology into competitive motorsport.
Fujimoto is one of the quiet architects of how Japanese racing teams are beginning to think about the future of performance.
At Future of Speed, he'll share how TOM'S is building the technical infrastructure for motorsport's next era.
TOM'S Racing — Takafumi Suzuki
Senior Corporate Officer
With two decades of expertise in IT and education, Takafumi Suzuki has a proven track record in scaling data-driven businesses, including recent innovations in the golf instruction industry.
Currently leading the technology and talent initiatives at TOM’S, focusing on Accelerated Talent Development by integrating sensory insights with data-led methodologies to achieve rapid performance optimization.
Sony AI —Kenta Kawamoto
Senior Research Scientist
Kenta Kawamoto is the originator of Gran Turismo Sophy — the AI racing agent that made history by defeating four of the world's best Gran Turismo drivers in a head-to-head competition. What began as Kawamoto-san's quiet side project at Sony in 2016 grew into a landmark in AI research, culminating in a Nature-published paper and the Sony Outstanding Engineer Award.
With deep roots in robotics (AIBO, QRIO) and a career spanning real-time systems, behavior learning, and deep reinforcement learning, he brings a rare combination of engineering depth and visionary thinking to the intersection of AI and motorsport.
Max Frenzel, Ph.D. — CTPO, Track Titan
Max is an experienced AI researcher, product leader, and entrepreneur building AI-enabled coaching for racing drivers as CTPO at Track Titan — the "Strava for motorsport."
After completing his PhD in Quantum Information Theory from Imperial College London, Max has spent the last decade bridging cutting-edge AI research and real-world applications.
Track Titan recently closed a $5 million Seed round co-led by Partech and Game Changers Ventures — the fund led by Alpine F1 co-owner Roger Ehrenberg — with backing from existing investor APX, a joint venture between Axel Springer SE and Porsche AG, who doubled down from pre-seed.
Track Titan has also partnered with major hardware manufacturers including MOZA and Fanatec.
Koji "Ron" Obara — Japan's Fastest Safety Car Driver
Known across Japan's motorsport community as the fastest safety car driver on circuit.
Ron serves as an official safety car driver at Sportsland SUGO and Fuji Speedway, and holds a Grade A license for the Nürburgring circuit in Germany.
He also works as a practical instructor for JAF National A License testing bringing deep on-track expertise to everything he does. His current mission: an overall victory at the Nürburgring 24 Hours.
Maprang Suwanbubpa — Founder & CEO, Checkmate AI
Maprang is the founder and CEO of Checkmate AI, a Tokyo-based AI startup building GREYZONE™ — an AI-powered FIA regulations edge finder that parses motorsport technical regulations in real time to surface grey zones, tolerance stacks, and interpretive gaps that racing teams can exploit competitively.
With GREYZONE™ already gaining interest in the F1 and Super GT paddocks, Maprang is on a mission to make regulatory intelligence the next frontier in competitive motorsport.
Special appearance by Piers Sanderson, Director of Netflix's Drive to Survive — joining live from New York City
Netflix's Drive to Survive — Piers Sanderson Director & Producer, Box to Box Films / Netflix
Piers Sanderson is an Emmy-winning, BAFTA-nominated writer, producer-director and self-shooting filmmaker, currently directing series for Netflix. He has been working on Drive to Survive since Season 4 and is embedded with Ferrari and Haas on race weekends — the person inside the garage when history is made. At Future of Speed, he brings the storytelling lens: how the human drama of motorsport gets captured, framed, and sent to 190 countries.
Expect a dynamic exchange on performance, innovation, and the real-world impact of emerging technologies on racing, both on and off the track. There will also be time for audience Q&A, so come ready with thoughtful questions.
We will close with an introduction to Future of Speed Summit 2027, followed by open networking.
Join us at Google for Startups for an evening of ideas, conversation, and connection with builders, operators, and enthusiasts shaping what comes next.
MODERATOR
Lee Jean (Moderator) — Co-founder & CEO, Pulsar Innovations
Lee Jean is the co-founder and CEO of Pulsar Innovations, and a familiar face in Tokyo's innovation and technology ecosystem.
As moderator for Future of Speed: Racing Intelligence, Lee brings sharp cross-industry instincts and the ability to draw out the most compelling ideas from the room — keeping the conversation fast, focused, and forward-looking.
AGENDA
🏎️ Future of Speed: Racing Intelligence 📍 Google for Startups Shibuya | 6:00 – 9:30 PM
An evening at the intersection of motorsport and artificial intelligence — bringing together the builders, drivers, and thinkers shaping the future of racing.
AGENDA
6:00 - 6:30 PM — Doors Open: Registration and networking
6:30 - 6:35 PM — Welcome: Maprang Suwanbubpa opens the night with a single framing question: what happens to motorsport when AI enters the arms race?
6:35 - 6:50 PM — Session 1A: The Industry Perspective
Motorsport has always been where the world's most consequential technology gets proven before it reaches anywhere else. But most people outside the industry are watching the wrong signals.
Yoshihiro Masamoto, Head of McLaren Automotive Japan, opens the evening with a perspective that very few people in any room can offer — someone who lives inside one of the most iconic performance brands in the world while interpreting that brand for the most technologically sophisticated automotive market on the planet.
In this session, Masamoto-san won't be talking about race results or championship standings. He'll be talking about what's actually shifting at the frontier of performance engineering, what technology is emerging from the extreme edge of hypercar and customer racing development that mainstream awareness hasn't caught up to yet, and what Japan — with its decades of engineering culture, its circuits, its manufacturers — is doing right, and where the gaps still are.
If you want to understand where high-performance technology is actually heading, this is where the evening begins.
Speakers: Masamoto | Moderator: Maprang Followed by audience Q&A
6:50 - 7:15 PM — Session 1B: The Future is Electric
Japan's most storied Toyota racing outfit has spent 50 years pushing vehicles to their absolute limit on track. Now TOM'S is asking a different question entirely: what happens when that engineering culture meets the EV revolution — and what does the future of mobility look like when it's built by people who have never accepted "good enough"?
In this session, Tetsuya Fujimoto (Head of Advanced Technology Development) and Takafumi Suzuki (Senior Corporate Officer) join us for an honest conversation about what motorsport teaches you that no traditional manufacturer gets to learn, how you design an electric experience for everyone — not just professionals — and whether Japan's complicated relationship with EV adoption is about to change.
Speakers: Fujimoto, Suzuki | Moderator: Maprang Followed by audience Q&A
7:15 - 7:55 PM — Session 2A: When AI Meets the Driver
A GT500 driver, an AI racing researcher, and a data-driven coaching platform in one room. Kawamoto built an AI that outpaces human champions. Max uses AI to make human drivers faster. Ukyo is the human in the middle. What does the driver know that the machine doesn't — and for how much longer?
Speakers: Kawamoto, Max, Ukyo | Moderator: Lee Jean Followed by audience Q&A
7:55 - 8:30 PM — Session 2B: The Race Before the Race
Championships are won on track — but often decided long before anyone turns a wheel. Inside the regulatory layer of motorsport: the grey zones, the interpretive gaps, and the loopholes that separate teams who read the rules from teams who understand them.
Speakers: Maprang, Koji | Moderator: Lee Jean Followed by audience Q&A
8:30 - 8:40 PM — Special Address: The Human Story Inside Formula 1
Piers Sanderson steps back from the technology to ask what the data can't answer: what does it feel like to be the human being at the center of all this? A reflection on the drivers, the team principals, and the stories that make motorsport matter.
Followed by audience Q&A moderated by Lee Jean
8:40 - 8:45 PM — Closing Remarks:
A send-off that ties the night together — from the industry to the cockpit, from the regulations room to the human story.
Moderated by Lee Jean
8:45 - 9:30 PM — Networking
9:30 PM — End
Doors open at 6:00 PM sharp. Seats are limited — arrive on time.