Strong showing by NISMO in Autopolis Super GT

Strong showing by NISMO in Autopolis Super GT

Nissan completed its strongest Super GT performance of 2017 at Autopolis last weekend with all four Nissan GT-R NISMO GT500 machines finishing in the top 10.

Veteran Satoshi Motoyama starred for Nissan in qualifying when he put the No. 46 S Road Craftsports GT-R on the front row of the grid in second place. He and teammate Katsumasa Chiyo battled strongly throughout the race to just miss out on a podium in fourth place.

Starting from 11th on the grid, the No. 23 Motul Autech GT-R had Ronnie Quintarelli at the wheel for the first stint, and he stayed out later than any other top running competitor before pitting at lap 40 to hand the wheel over to Tsugio Matsuda.

Matsuda continued the charge and finished the race right on the tail of Chiyo in fifth place – part of a line of four cars that were battling for second place overall.

The No. 12 Calsonic Impul GT-R (Hironobu Yasuda / Jann Mardenborough) and the No. 24 Forum Engineering Advan GT-R (Daiki Sasaki / Joao Paulo de Oliveira) both had strong races, rising from ninth and 14th on the grid to finish seventh and ninth respectively.

"For about the last 20 laps I was fighting it out, but the No. 100 managed to stay in front of me, which was pretty frustrating," said Chiyo. "The yellow flags came out, and although I aimed for my one chance to get through at the first corner, I couldn't hold onto the position. It's really disappointing to think that we were so close to a podium finish. However, we've clearly built up a car that is competitive, which I'm really appreciative of."

 


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