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may 08, 2018 - Nissan Motorsport

Nissan takes Super GT victory at Fuji Speedway

Nissan scored gold during "Golden Week" in #japan at the latest round of the Super GT Championship with #ronniequintarelli and #tsugiomatsuda taking their first victory of the year.

The duo started third with Quintarelli grabbing the lead of the race before the end of the first lap last Friday. Despite losing the lead towards the end of the first stint, the Italian/Japanese combination fought hard. Matsuda's quick in-lap before the second stop – combined with a stunning out-lap by Quintarelli – put the No. 23 Motul Autech GT-R back in the race lead.

From there, it was just a matter of maintaining the tires until the checkered flag.

"It's really an amazing victory," said Quintarelli. "I tried to push very hard on the start. I had a very good reaction to the lights, a very good start. On the formation lap, I worked hard on warming the tires so I could fight the two cars in front of me. Of course, if they block you it's not easy, but I was much quicker into turn one, and I overtook one car, and the other on the second half of the track. Coming back after one lap and being P1 motivated me a lot and I kept pushing. But at the end of the stint, and especially in the traffic, I started to lose grip. Kovalainen had better pace, so he overtook me. We had three stints in this race, and I was confident that in the second stint Tsugio could jump in the car and do a good job as well. I knew that if I had a good out-lap I could come out in front of Kovalainen, and the tyres would work much better compared to the first stint with the rubber on the track so I could defend the first position. The competition is very high with both drivers and manufacturers. There's such a high level at all the races, but we have a very good team and NISMO is working hard. One victory in two races, and now we're leading the championship – it's amazing."

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