After being crowned as Blancpain
Endurance Cup champions in their first Pro Cup effort in 2015 and
with a quite productive 2016 season, Team RJN is trying to rebuild
their most recent glory in what may be the final year of the Nissan
GT-R GT3 in its current model, as plans for a new car are already
moving forward.
For the 2017 season the British team
will field a single Godzilla only for the Endurance Cup, which is
quite a reduction in their program compared to the pair of full
Blancpain GT season entries, getting rid of offering the
opportunity of a high level competition to the newest GT Academy
graduates. In terms of drivers the bet is in the most suited pros for
GT3 racing in the Japanese manufacturer, as Alex Buncombe and
first GT Academy graduate Lucas Ordoñez will stay as
Katsumasa Chiyo replaces Mitsunori Takaboshi as the third
driver. The current lineup curiously has two of the champions from
2015, as GT Academy's Wolfgang Reip left Nissan to join Bentley in
2016.
Ordoñez is a safe pair of hands of the
trio, and Chiyo is an incredibly fast driver, but Buncombe's ability
on heavy traffic and during restarts stands out as it is a proven
trump card used several times in the past.
The news for this year also came with
the announcement that a new Nissan GT-R GT3 will be developed to
start racing in 2018, still based in the R35 variation of the GT-R
but heavily overhauled in order to keep track with the current GT3
competition. Testing places are still a secret but it is known that
Masataka Yanagida and Michael Krumm will take care of
the development on track of the new Godzilla.
PHOTO: NISMO
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