2020.02.16

Nissan/NISMO holds 2020 plan announcement event. KONDO in GT300 class welcomes new Fujinami / De Oliveira duo.

　Nissan and NISMO hosted Nissan Motorsports Fan Event on February 16 at Nissan Gallery located at Nissan's Global Headquarter in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture. Drivers and team managers of Nissan's GT500 class teams announced at the Tokyo Auto Salon in January came all together at the event. With a huge crowd of fans who came to see the event despite rainy weather as well as media members watching, the drivers and team managers reemphasized their determination to fight strong in SUPER GT in upcoming 2020-season.
　The company also announced its "2020 Nissan Motorsports Program" during the event which revealed the partner teams that will be competing in the GT300 class with NISSAN GT-R NISMO GT3.

 

 

 

　During the 2020 Nissan Motorsports Program presentation that was held at the beginning of the event, NISMO President and CEO Takao Katagiri (in above photo) commented, "This year, Nissan and NISMO will again be engaged in various motorsports activities, with a focus on the two pillars of the Formula E championship and Super GT. We will continue to provide support to teams from different parts of the world that race with GT-R NISMO GT3 in series like GT300 class, Nurburgring 24 Hour, and Super Taikyu. By turning the passion of each team and the support from the fans into our motivation, we are determined to showcase exciting battle in all categories we will be involved with."
　As CEO Katagiri expressed automaker's commitment to the sports, new NISSAN GT-R NISMO GT500 that will be competing in the GT500 class was unveiled. "Although the livery and the appearance have not changed much, this is totally a new car. Nissan/NISMO took the aerodynamics parts and suspension that are standardized with DTM and further improved the performance on our own. The car also has a newly designed engine. Our goal is to recapture the title, and, for that, we will continue to focus our effort in development until the season opener."

2020 NEW NISSAN GT-R NISMO GT500 (No. 23 car)

 

　Machine names were also revealed during the presentation. NISMO from the GT500 class will be competing with No.23 MOTUL AUTECH GT-R (Tsugio Matsuda / Ronnie Quintarelli) with Team Manager Yutaka Suzuki and track engineer Takeshi Nakajima. NDDP RACING with B-MAX will race under No.3 CRAFTSPORTS MOTUL GT-R (Kohei Hirate / Katsumasa Chiyo) with Toshikazu Tanaka and Masashi Miyata, team manager and engineer, respectively. The top management stays unchanged at these two teams.
　No.12 CALSONIC IMPUL GT-R (Daiki Sasaki / Kazuki Hiramine) fielded by TEAM IMPUL with Team Manager Kazuyoshi Hoshino at the helm has a new engineer for the season, Toshiomi Oeki. KONDO RACING will be competing with No.24 Realize Corporation ADVAN GT-R (Mitsunori Takaboshi / Jann Mardenborough) under the direction of Team Manager Masahiko Kondo and joined by Keisuke Negishi as team's engineer.
　NISMO COO Motohiro Matsumura will continue to be the Executive director again this season managing all of these four Nissan teams. The squad will be supported by Satoshi Motoyama and Michael Krumm who will be assuming the role of Executive Advisor.

 

GT500 class drivers (excluding absent No.24 Jann Mardenborough)

Five NISSAN GT-R NISMO GT3s will be fielded in the GT300 class through the company's customer racing program. GAINER and KONDO RACING fielding two and one GT-R, respectively, are the official partner team.　Remaining GT-R will be fielded by NILZZ Racing and TOMEI SPORTS.
　GAINER's No.10 GAINER TANAX ITOCHU ENEX with IMPUL GT-R will have Kazuki Hoshino and Keishi Ishikawa in its driver's seat and be fitted with Yokohama tires. Team's the other car will be entered as No.11 GAINER TANAX GT-R with Katsuyuki Hiranaka and Hironobu Yasuda as the drivers and Dunlop as its tire supplier, which are all same as last year.
　KONDO RACING will stay with Yokohama Tire for their No.56 Realize Nissan Automobile Technical College GT-R, however, the team will have a new driver line-up with Kiyoto Fujinami and Joao Paulo de Oliveira.
 

No.23 NISMO Team Manager Suzuki, Tsugio Matsuda, Ronnie Quintarelli

 

　After the introduction of Nissan/NISMO's plan for 2020, each of the GT500 class teams appeared on the stage once again for about 10 minutes long talk show. The talk show focused more on touching the personal characteristics of the drivers rather than topics related to racing, and they openly spoke about how they spend their time during the offseason or their personal interest. All drivers and team managers of four teams returned to the stage after the talk show and each shared their goal for upcoming season.
 

No.3 NDDP RACING with B-MAX TM Tanaka, Kohei Hirate, Katsumasa Chiyobr />

No.12 TEAM IMPUL TM Hoshino, Daiki Sasaki, Kazuki Hiramine


No.24 KONDO RACING TM Kondo, Mitsunori Takaboshi (Jann Mardenborough absent)

 

At last, Executive director Matsumura (in below photo) gave a closing comment, "The four Nissan teams are rivals themselves, but our aim is to combine all the power from each team and bring back the title to the Nissan squad together."
 

 

The stage moved on to GT3 talk show with the official partner teams from the GT300 class after the GT500 class talk show. Team Manager Kazumi Fujii, Katsuyuki Hiranaka, Kazuki Hoshino, and Keishi Ishikawa from GAINER and Team Manager Masahiko Kondo, Kiyoto Fujinami, and Joao Paulo de Oliveira from KONDO RACING appeared on the stage.

GT300 class GAINER No.10 Kazuki Hoshino, Keishi Ishikawa, TM Fujii No.11 Katsuyuki Hiranaka (Hironobu Yasuda absent)
 

　Drawing attention this season with new driver line-up, Team Manager Kondo of KONDO RACING appeared confident as he expressed his determination, "Our drivers from last year improved a lot and both of them stepped up to GT500. It was not easy to find their replacement while trying not to compromise the competitiveness our team had, but I'm confident we can compete strong with these two drivers."
 

 

GT300 class No.56 KONDO RACING TM Kondo, De Oliveira, Kiyoto Fujinami

 

 

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