The first all-new entrant in the 2018 Autobacs Super GT Series has officially been confirmed.

CarGuy Racing announced on Tuesday that they will compete in the GT300 class beginning in 2018, with a brand-new Honda NSX GT3 that was purchased in late November – the first known customer team of the new GT3-spec Honda.

CarGuy founder and CEO Takeshi Kimura is set to make his Super GT debut in 2018, as he is set to partner the returning former GT300 Drivers’ Champion Naoki Yokomizo.

CarGuy Racing, who have enjoyed incredible success in just their second year as a team, have previously raced in the Super Taikyu Series, and sponsored efforts in the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia series and are the title sponsor of their own amateur-level GT Racing series, the Car Guy Super Car Race.

Last August, the team scored something of an upset when they took a race victory at the Blancpain GT Series Asia round at Fuji Speedway in their Lamborghini Huracán GT3, competing as a local wildcard against the regulars of the series.

It’s the culmination of a career goal for 47-year-old Kimura, the avid car collector who founded CarGuy in 2015 as an automotive entertainment company, a man who’s found great success in a short time producing videos and live events for car enthusiasts across Japan. As a long-term goal, Kimura has his team’s sights set on an entry at Le Mans – but the step up to GT300 is a major milestone for his team, and for himself as a proper gentleman driver – with only two years of racing experience under his belt.

Yokomizo, 38, brings 11 seasons and 82 career races’ worth of experience to the first-year Super GT team. After Lamborghini Team Direction suspended operations at the end of 2016, Yokomizo took a one-year sabbatical from Super GT, and took on the new challenge of being CarGuy Racing’s lead driver across multiple championships.

He is a dual-class race winner in Super GT, with two wins in GT300 for MOLA and Team Taisan, and a GT500 class victory earlier in his career driving for Hasemi Motorsport and alongside then co-driver Ronnie Quintarelli. The highlight of his career remains his 2012 GT300 title with Team Taisan Endless and co-driver Kyosuke Mineo, the most recent championship for Porsche in Super GT.

Yokomizo was one of the two drivers who helped power CarGuy to their unexpected Fuji victory in Blancpain GT Asia.

The other driver at the helm was newly-crowned Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia champion, Kei Francesco Cozzolino, who for 2018 takes on a unique role as the team director of CarGuy Racing at just 30 years of age – making the Japanese-Italian driver the youngest team director in the series.

Cozzolino, as well as Super Trofeo Asia runner-up Afiq Yazid of Malaysia, have been named “supporting drivers” for the team – who would each be available for long-distance races or in any event where Kimura or Yokomizo would not be available to race.

CarGuy Racing are the first of what could be as many as four new customers of the Honda NSX GT3, who will all receive support from M-TEC (parent company of Team Mugen) throughout the 2018 season.

The team expect to employ up to 15 racing mechanics, and will maintain their operations at the Gotemba CarGuy Factory based near Fuji Speedway.