NISMO TAKES BACK THE MOUNTAIN

Nismo’s Global Team has taken victory at one of the world’s most gruelling 12-hour races — the Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hour — in spectacular last-minute fashion, despite two of the three drivers, Wolfgang Reip and Florian Strauss, being recent graduates of the GT Driving Academy and therefore considered as rookies.

The team faced a busy night between qualifying and race day as its top driver, Katsumasa Chiyo, spun on turn four and backed the GT-R into the wall hard when pushing for pole, but an earlier lap qualified them in third. The race saw a mixture of extreme race pace and an unprecedented 20 safety cars, as a result of which it effectively came down to a two-lap sprint race after a Porsche was cleared from the track with only four minutes to go. Chiyo avenged his earlier accident by going from third to first in the matter of one lap, straight off the back of a safety car, and then didn’t look back as it all crumbled for Matt Bell in the M-Sport Bentley, who went from first to fourth in that same time, to finish just behind the second-placed Phoenix Racing Audi R8 GT3 and the Craft Bamboo Aston Martin, which placed third.