Adele - Chasing Pavements

Nismo Festival 2008 – Dates Announced

The 12th Annual Nismo Festival is now locked in for Sunday, November 30th 2008. Held at Fuji Speedway, this year’s highlight is a giant SuperGT GT500 GT-R stage as well as loads of other GT-Rs old and new. Other events are also in the planning stages.

This is one of, if not THE best GT-R event annually in Japan and thousands upon thousands will be in attendance. Definitely worth a trip to Japan just for this.
Source: Nismo via GTR-World.net

Nismo Festival 2008: One Week To Go

Just one week to go until the biggest Nismo event outside the SuperGT race season hits Japan and we’re pumped for it. This year GTRBlog is taking you all along with us with some exclusive access to all the cars and news direct from Fuji Speedway. Nismo Festival is on next Sunday, the 30th of November.

Nismo Festival is broken down into three separate areas on the day with multiple events on simultaneously. There’s little chance to rest for the real enthusiasts. The three areas are Race Area, Paddock Area and the Stand Area. Each area has it’s own schedule so here’s a rundown what we’ll see on the day.

Race Area

1. Historic car race – The KPGC10 Prince Skyline GT-R achieved 52 wins in it’s racing history, see it against Nissan 240Z and the TS Sunny on the circuit.
2. Nissan MARCH Cup Exhibition race with special guest drivers
3. Celebration of the 50th anniversary of international motor racing for Nissan. The first event being the Mobilgas Trial in Australia in 1958 where the #19 Datsun 210 “Fuji-Go” won in class A.
4. Le Mans race simulation – The lessons learnt at Le Mans with cars such as the Nissan R390 GT1 contributed much in the way of racing knowledge to today’s SuperGT and Super Taikyu race categories.
5. SuperGT GT500 GT-R Special Battle – See the victorious Nissan GT-R’s from SuperGT 2008 series battle in a special race against each other. Godzilla wins for sure.
6. Grid Walk – Get up close with the GT-R’s on the Fuji Speedway racetrack grid where spectators can walk amongst them. Requires special ticket of course.
7. Final – Parade lap for all the cars participating in Nismo Festival as the sun sets.

Paddock Area

1. Exhibition Cars and Engines Corner – See Nismo / Nissan cars from racing days gone by.
2. Exciting Corner – Get down in the pits as the racing GT-R’s scream past.
3. NISMO Pits – Get in and checkout the Nismo pits up close.
4. SuperGT Talk Show events – A chat with all the various parts of the SuperGT 2008 teams. Race queens, team managers, GT300 drivers and GT500 drivers throughout the day.

Stand Area

1. Opening Ceremony – 9:00am start
2. 50th Anniversary of the international motor racing success fan appreciation ceremony
3. Various talks and stage events – Questions, quizzes, charity auction, a chat with the Gran Turismo 5 developers, a chat with the Nismo drivers
4. Pit Lane work exhibition – You might get a chance to try changing tires on a GT500 race car.
5. Test Drive corner – Take a test drive of Nissan’s latest models.
6. Gran Turismo 5 Driving Simulators
7. KYOSYO Radio Control Hobby Corner
8. Loads of things to keep the kids entertained.
9. Nissan / NISMO Collection Shop Onsite – Buy all that GT-R related merchandise you can’t get outside of Japan!
10. Nissan / NISMO Model Car Shop Onsite – Same for all those GT-R models that are hard to get.
11. Garage Sale Corner – Pick up a souvenir from a race team here. Some race car parts used in this seasons race go on sale. Gotta be quick to pickup good stuff here as it goes very quickly! Everything from brakes to carbon panels.
12. Nismo Shop – Checkout the Nismo upgrades available for your Nissan.

Link: Nismo Festival 2008 Home Page

Nismo Festival 2008: GT-Rs of Nismo Festival

 

 

 Nismo Festival photo galleries ahoy! The first thing I have to say about Nismo Festival is that it’s a huge event staged over an even larger geographical area. My job there was to experience it and photograph it so I could give a report to my readers. I will be writing this but for now I have time to make these photo galleries available right now.

This first one from Sunday’s festival is a wrap up of as many GT-Rs as we could find at the festival that were standing still at the time. There were more I know of but did not capture every single one.
This unfortunately does not include the car park which contained many many more that we didn’t get time to photograph. I saw a amazingly clean Midnight Purple R33 400R GT-R in the car park and kicked myself for not having my camera on me at that time, such is life. If you’re out there 400R owner, send me your photos!
Anything that was moving or on the racetrack makes it into another photo gallery to be posted in the coming few posts.
Click through the pages below to read more, see the rest of the many images in this gallery and get some background on the cars you will see in the posts to come…
Photos: Those watermarked with GTRBlog.com logo are copyright GTRBlog.com
Photos: Those without GTRBlog.com watermark are owned by GTR-World.net and are reproduced here with permission
Hakosuka KPGC10 Skyline GT-Rs
Introduced in 1972 the coupe version of the outstandingly successful PGC10 four door Skyline 2000 GT-R. Together they’d won 1000 racing victories from 1969 until it was discontinued in 1974 to be replaced with the KPGC110.

Nismo Street Cars: Z-Tune and 400R
Some of the toughest street cars to ever make their way out of Nismo’s Omori Factory onto the streets of Japan.
Interesting trivia, the chief engineer of the Nismo 400R was Takeuchi-san. The very same man who took the above Hakosuka GT-R photos.

1995 Nissan R33 Skyline GT-R LM
Built for the 24hrs of LeMans and raced in 1995 and 1996 finishing 15th outright and 10th in class in 1996. This GT-R was eventually retired to be replaced by the Nissan R390. A completely different animal and also found at Nismo Festival. Didn’t see this beast on the track though, would have been good to see how it did against the R390 and GT500 cars.
Photos: GTRBlog and GTR-World.net.

Group-A Nissan Skyline R32 GT-Rs
The very reason the R32 and the legacy of AWD Nissan Skyline GT-R exists at all is these very cars. Nissan wanted to retire the rear wheel drive R31 GTS-R Group A Skylines and had chosen the HCR32 chassis to build on. Per the rules it was required to build and homologate the road going R32 Nissan Skyline GT-R to do it.
These guys were amazing in their day, winning at home and abroad in Group-A competitions such as the Bathurst 1000 in Australia.
These car also joined the GT-R Super Lap battle against racing GT-Rs from more modern eras on Sunday, we’ll have the report on how that did a bit later. Was really awesome to see them racing against the R35 GT500 cars.

1998 Nissan Skyline R33 GT-R GT500 Race Car
This Pennzoil Nismo Nissan Skyline GT-R GT500 car was driven by �rik Comas and Masami Kageyama to victory in the 1998 JGTC Championship. It was retired that year and replaced with the 1999 R34 GT500 car.

Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R GT500 Race Cars
R34 GT-R GT500 had a long career racing in the SuperGT series from 1999 to 2003. The R34 GT-R managed wins in it’s first (1999) and final (2003) series championships and both of these championship winning cars were there on Sunday.
The Pennzoil R34 GT-R GT500 car was driven by �rik Comas in his back to back championship victory in 1999 after winning in 1998 driving an R33 also.
The XANAVI Nismo R34 GT-R GT500 car was driven by, current 2008 SuperGT champion, Satoshi Motoyama in 2003 to victory with Michael Krumm co-driving. Michael now drives the #22 SuperGT car for MOTUL Autech Nismo team.

Official Fuji Speedway Pace Car
Like Sendai Highland Raceway, Fuji Speedway also uses an R35 GT-R as it’s official pace car. This was often seen out on the track over the course of the day.

SuperGT 2008 Nissan R35 GT-R GT500 Cars
In 2008 the Nissan GT-R makes a comeback to SuperGT GT500 class racing again with the R35 GT-R GT500 cars. Making a historic pole to win plus second place victory in the first race for both the Nismo team cars the comeback was truly great for the Japanese motorsport fans. R35 GT500 GT-R’s went on to win the majority of the season’s races despite heavy weight penalties being applied.
Of course the GT-R of the 2008 season champions, the #23 Xanavi Nismo GT-R driven by Satoshi Motoyama was there on Sunday proudly displaying their victory trophies. As well the other 2008 SuperGT GT500 cars were also in attendance.

Nismo Festival 2008: GT-R Special Battle

 

 

 

 One of the biggest highlights of the Nismo Festival for GT-R fans was the GT-R Special Lap battle. This was a 10 lap race between Nissan GT-R race cars from four generations racing together in one race. Quite an amazing site to see the combined history of JGTC/SuperGT racing together on the track going all out at the same time.

The entrants in the GT-R Special Battle were:

• R32 Group-A Race Cars: STP Taisan #2, Calsonic #12 and the #1 Unisa Jecs GT-Rs
• R33 GT-R GT500 JGTC Race Car: Pennzoil Nismo #23 GT500 GT-R
• R34 GT-R GT500 JGTC Race Cars: Pennzoil Nismo #23, Xanavi Nismo #22, Xanavi Nismo #23 and Motul Autech #22 GT500 GT-Rs
• R35 GT-R GT500 SuperGT Race Cars: #1 Xanavi Nismo, #22 Motul Autech, #3 YMS, #12 Calsonic, #24 Woodone Advan R35 GT500 GT-Rs

Before the race a ceremony was held to officially crown the championship GT-R with it’s prize, the right to wear the #1. The championship of the 2008 SuperGT series, the #23 Xanavi Nismo R35 GT-R was parked on the red carpet and drivers Satoshi Motoyama and Beno�t Tr�luyer were given a warm welcome by the crowd as well as Nissan CEO, Carlos Ghosn.
Mr Ghosn then gave a speech in Japanese to the Nismo Festival attendees and greeted all the other SuperGT drivers as well before departing. I was really surprised to see Carlos at Nismo Festival and think it’s a great thing he came.
The GT-R Special Battle race was then held after a short Z33 race event. The battle itself was great. The R35′s dominated in terms of speed as you’d expect but the Xanavi Nismo #23 R34 GT-R showed real commitment and kept up with them lap after lap falling behind only after half the race was over. Another surprise was that the R33 GT500 car was able to mix it with the R34′s easily keeping pace.
The Group-A R32′s had raw horsepower and the AWD advantage but when it comes to the corners, with no aero really to speak of they lacked the grip to make a difference and quickly fell back while the superior GT500 cars with their slick bodies and giant aero surfaces. The competition between the R32′s was fierce however and many times were braking too late for the 11th corner chicane going straight through it instead.
Overall I think it was amazing they got these cars out of their storage warehouse and got them back on the circuit where they belong for this. Kudos to Nismo for pulling off a very exciting race event here.
Click through the pages below to see the full photo gallery of the race including some of the pre-race ceremony and Carlos Ghosn’s visit…

The GT-R Color Nissan Should’ve Offered?

Across the world the amount of discussion generated about the lack of a blue option for the Nissan GT-R is alarming. My guess is that it stems from a love affair many had with the Bayside Blue found on Nissan’s legendary R34 Skyline GT-R.
Bayside Blue was the launch color for the R34 GT-R and, at launch in 1999, the first of only a handful of GT-R specific colors. Bayside Blue went on to prove one of the most successful colors available for the GT-R and subsequently Nissan made it available on special edition R34 Skylines that weren’t GT-Rs so everyone could share in the love.
When the R35 was launched without a single shade of blue in sight, many wondered if it would become a special edition as time went by. Personally I seriously doubt that will ever happen.
So for now, one US owner has decided to take it upon himself. While this is not exactly Bayside Blue it is very close and the color is known as “Royal T Blue”.
You can check out the painting process photos and more over at his blog linked below.
So what other colors should Nissan offer for the R35 GT-R? Add your choices in the comments below…
Update: The blue Nissan GT-R visited STILLEN’s office yesterday and they snapped a whole bunch more photos for their blog. Go check their photo gallery for the rest of the pics.
Source: Blue R35 Blog

HiOctane’s Mental Time Attack R34 GT-R Prepping for World Time Attack Challenge

I’ve always had a fascination with this car since I first checked it out at Superlap 2009 back in March last year. Maybe it harkens back to my black R34 GT-R or maybe it’s the absolute raw focus and single mindedness of this build. It’s probably both mixed in with the fact that it’s happening in Australia versus somewhere in Japan where you’d normally see a R34 this insane.
This year the Superlap event has gone global and taken new form as the World Time Attack Challenge and Hi Octane are getting the car ready with some interesting updates to improve grip in the corners.
With thanks to Aeromotions and The Tuners Group, they’ve upgraded to an active rear wing that gives them more downforce in the turns but less drag down the straights. They’ve also updated the front aero with a rather impressive (and by that I mean massive) looking splitter.
Other changes to the suspension will hopefully make the car a little easier to control especially now that it’s making even more power even earlier due to an E85 tune.
The World Time Attack Challenge has attracted competitors from as far away as the US and Japan this year so there’s going to be some stiff competition. For GT-R fans this will be the horse to back I’m betting. Can it slay the finely tuned Evos of the world though? We’ll see this coming May…
For now I highly recommend you turn your speakers up and listen to this crazy RB26 as it preps for the coming events in the video below…
Link: Aeromotions Wing Data @ The Tuners Group
Link: World Time Attack Challenge Website