While heavy cloud cover meant more than 30,000 fans could not see Mount Fuji, fans did get to see more than 60 years of Nissan’s incredible racing history and gain insight into its exciting future at the 2018 NISMO Festival.
The annual fan appreciation event featured an exciting day of races, demonstration and fan events with cars ranging from the 1958 Around Australia Trial class-winning Datsun 1000 through to Nissan e.dams Formula E car, which will make its debut in the all-electric street-racing championship in two weeks.
Test and reserve driver, Japanese ace Mitsunori Takaboshi, drove the Formula E car. The ex-Japanese Formula 3 champion excited local fans by performing donuts on the main straight before showcasing the power and agility of the “Gen2” car.
The demonstration also featured Nissan LEAF NISMO road cars and the new Nissan LEAF NISMO RC electric racer, which was officially unveiled on Friday at the Formula E team’s launch at Nissan’s Tokyo brand-experience center, Nissan Crossing.
Featuring more than twice the performance of the previous generation Nissan LEAF NISMO RC, the new electric racers were piloted by Super GT racer Tsugio Matsuda and Japanese actor, singer and race team owner, Masahiko Kondo.
Newly-announced Nissan e.dams race driver Oliver Rowland was also on hand to see the Formula E car’s debut along with Jann Mardenborough, who was announced as team’s simulator driver on Friday.
Other track highlights included historic demonstrations, a Z-challenge exhibition race, and the annual NISMO GP which features cars from the Japanese Super GT and Super Taikyu championship.
The NISMO GP was won by the No. 23 Nissan GT-R NISMO GT500 of Ronnie Quintarelli and Tsugio Matsuda.
In addition to the 30,000+ fans on site, the entire day’s activities were live streamed on NISMO.com and NISMO’s YouTube channel—NISMO.tv.
The day’s activities were completed with Kondo Racing’s recently announced Nurburgring 24 Hour challenger revealed for the Japanese fans and a celebration of GTNET Motorsports Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 championship victory in Super Taikyu.
Source. Nissan
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