Nissan misses third consecutive title but takes Motegi victory

MOTEGI, Japan – Nissan may have fallen short in its challenge to take a history-making third consecutive Super GT GT500 championship, but the NISMO squads completed the current era of the championship with another victory Twin Ring Motegi.

Daiki Sasaki and Masataka Yanagida took victory in the postponed round three of the championship staged on Saturday. Originally scheduled for May at Autopolis, the round had to be cancelled due to the Kumamoto earthquake.

The win by the Forum Engineering squad mirrored their victory from Sportsland Sugo earlier this year when they elected to not change tires during the scheduled pit stop.

The remaining GT-R squads all scored top 10 results finishing seventh, eighth and ninth with Hironobu Yasuda/JP de Oliveira leading Satoshi Motoyama/Katsumasa Chiyo and Ronnie Quintarelli/Tsugio Matsuda.

In Sunday's final round, the No. 46 of Motoyama and Chiyo led the way for Nissan with sixth place finish ahead of Quintarelli/Matsuda (seventh), Yasuda/de Oliveira (eighth) and Sasaki/Yanagida (10th).

After taking the championship for the past two years in a row, Quintarelli and Matsuda had to settle for third place in 2017 as all four GT-R teams completed top 10 finishes in the points.

With new regulations set to be introduced in 2017, Nissan has completed a remarkable three seasons of dominance in Super GT including:

• Victory in 12 of the 24 races staged from 2014-2016
• All four GT-R entries have won races
• Championship success in 2014 and 2015
• Victory in five of the eight races in 2016

"To put it succinctly, the fact that we let a third consecutive title slip out of our grasp was due to lacking competitiveness with our rivals in the last race," said Nissan Team executive director, Toshikazu Tanaka. "In Saturday's race, Kondo Racing's strategy worked out perfectly to secure them their second victory of the season and raise hopes for the #1 Motul Autech GT-R to be able to take the season title. However, on the final day's race, we were completely outdone by our rivals. That being said, the GT-R has taken the title twice in the three years since the current regulations were introduced in 2014. That, along with 12 wins in 24 races, demonstrates that the Nissan teams have performed valiantly. This season alone we took five wins in eight races. While we have often been able to take advantage of the three different brands of tire and battle it out in Nissan's unique style, this season our four Nissans had instances where they let points slip out of their grasp and we missed out on the championship. We are going to carefully look into why we missed out on points in each instance and go out prepared to tackle the new regulations that will be introduced in 2017."

Brilliant weekend @MM_RoR, such a great event for a truly worthy charity @Missionmotorspt. Thanks for having me!

— Chris Hoy (@chrishoy) November 13, 2016

Check out the gallery from Saturday's @SUPERGT_JP race at Twin Ring Motegi at https://t.co/rJpzrpbmN7 #NISMOnation #OMGTR pic.twitter.com/xhSB567vR7

— Nissan NISMO (@NISMO) November 13, 2016

NISMO Calendar

November 19-20
FIA WEC, Bahrain

December 3-4
Australian Supercars, Homebush Street Circuit, Sydney, NSW,Australia

December 11
NISMO Festival, Fuji International Speedway, Japan

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Contact

Jane Johnstone
Marketing Communications Director
Global Motorsport Communications
Nissan/NISMO
Phone: +44 7979 710646
Email: jane.johnstone@nissan.co.uk

Paul Ryan
Marketing and PR Manager
Phone: +1 678 644 0404
Email: paul@nismosupport.com