Sixty Years Later, Sir Jackie Stewart Came Back to Fuji
On the eve of the 6 Hours of Fuji, a hundred guests gathered at the foot of the mountain for Japan’s first gala dinner in aid of Race Against Dementia — and for the man who won here in 1966.
There is a trophy in Scotland that Sir Jackie Stewart has kept for sixty years. He won it at Fuji Speedway in October 1966, aged twenty-seven, driving a Lola T90 in the Fuji 200 Mile Race. The circuit was nine months old. He was three years away from his first Formula One World Championship and a lifetime away from the safety campaign that would define him.
On Friday evening he came back.
Fuji 60 — Racing for Memory was held in the ballroom of the Fuji Speedway Hotel on 25 September, the night before the FIA World Endurance Championship opened its Fuji race weekend. It was hosted by Hersey Shiga Global K.K. in partnership with Race Against Dementia and the Championship, which has named the charity its Official Charity for the weekend. As far as anyone involved can establish, it is the first gala dinner of its kind held in Japan for the charity Sir Jackie founded after his wife, Lady Stewart, was diagnosed with dementia in 2016.
The room was an unusual mixture, and that was the point of it. At one table, the president of the Automobile Club de l’Ouest and the directors of the Championship. At another, drivers who would be racing within forty-eight hours, some of them straight from the circuit. Elsewhere, Tokyo — Louis Vuitton Japan, Able Holdings, Gordon Murray Automotive Japan, a Yamanashi winemaker, the Japanese motoring press.
Father and son
The centre of the evening was a conversation on stage between Sir Jackie and his son Mark Stewart, Chair of Trustees of Race Against Dementia, led by the broadcaster Sonia Ito with Komugi Yamazaki in Japanese. Behind them, archive film from Le Mans in 1965 and photographs taken at Fuji in 1966 by the late Japanese photographer Joe Honda.
Mark Stewart spoke about what the charity actually does, which is less obvious than it sounds. It does not simply write cheques. It finds outstanding early-career dementia researchers, funds them, and then coaches them — in leadership, in performance, in the working method of a sport that solves extremely complex problems at extraordinary speed. Teamwork, innovation, resilience, attention to detail. The search for a treatment, he said, is itself an endurance race.
His father stayed for the whole evening and spent time with guests one by one before the group photograph was taken.
The auction
Between courses, the lots were introduced — and this is the part that is still live as you read this.
Bid here: the Fuji charity auction in aid of Race Against Dementia
Bidding closes at 21:00 JST on Sunday 27 September (13:00 BST).
Among them: a crash helmet donated by Nyck de Vries, presented in a filmed message from the circuit. It carries a special Fuji design — cherry blossom, a band of Stewart tartan, and gold threaded through it in the manner of kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending what is broken with gold so that the repair becomes the most beautiful part of the object. He will wear it in Sunday’s race, sign it afterwards, and it goes to the winning bidder.
Race suits from Augusto Farfus of Team WRT and Maxime Martin of Iron Lynx, both presented on stage by the drivers themselves. A race-used rear bodywork panel from the Peugeot 9X8 Hypercar, signed by the 2025 driver line-up, presented by Stellantis Motorsport team principal Emmanuel Esnault.
And a Japanese thread running through it. In 1995 Masanori Sekiya became the first Japanese driver to win the Le Mans 24 Hours, in the McLaren F1 GTR number 59. The photographer Mikio Hasui was there that weekend, and has marked the thirtieth anniversary with the limited-edition book Jet Black 59. Two sets pair a numbered copy with a photograph Hasui developed by hand, signed by both him and Sekiya. A third lot adds a model of the winning car, built as it looked in the moments after the finish, in a Lanzante presentation box — a single example, made for this auction and donated by Make Up Co., Ltd.
There is wine, too: two sets of three bottles from the first vintage of Sollevigna in Yamanashi, donated by head winemaker Mayu Saito, who has signed the neck of every bottle and written a card by hand for each set.
The room
The dinner opened with the Tsugaru shamisen player Manami Kawasaki, who took the duo title at the national championship in 2025 for a third consecutive year. Four young women in furisode carried donation boxes between the tables. A toast was raised to sixty years since the Fuji win — and, briefly, to the Team WRT driver Darren Leung, who spent his birthday at a charity dinner the night before his own race.
The total raised will be confirmed after the auction closes on Sunday evening.
Fuji 60 — Racing for Memory was held on Friday 25 September 2026 at the Fuji Speedway Hotel, Shizuoka, hosted by Hersey Shiga Global K.K. in partnership with Race Against Dementia and the FIA World Endurance Championship.
The auction: superstars-auctions.com/6hoursoffujiinaidofraceagainstdementia — closes 21:00 JST, Sunday 27 September.
The charity: raceagainstdementia.com
