The new Nissan GT-R enjoyed the perfect start to it's racing career with a 1-2 finish in the opening round of the Super GT Series season at Suzuka.
Having started from second on the grid, Benoit Treluyer and Satoshi Motoyama secured victory in the #23 Xanavi Nismo entry, while pole-sitters Michael Krumm and Masataka Yanagida came home second in the #22 Motul Autech machine.
As the field lined up on the grid, only the #1 ARTA NSX of Ralph Firman and Takuya Izawa was missing as the car started from the pitlane following transmission problems in the warm-up, but it wasn't long before others hit problems as Sebastien Philippe in the #12 Calsonic Impul GT-R was tipped into a spin by Andre Lotterer in the #35 Petronas Tom's SC430. Although Philippe was forced to return to the pits for repairs to the rear of his car, Lotterer escaped without punishment.
Out front, the two GT-Rs were proving to be the class of the field, with pole-man Krumm holding the lead over Treluyer and Lotterer in third.
Having started to lap the slower GT300 machines, the leaders soon arrived at their mandatory pit-stops, with Treluyer the first to hand the car over to Motoyama on lap 22. Two laps later, Krumm pitted to hand the leading car over to Yanagida and although his stop was slightly quicker, Motoyama made the most of warm tyres on his car to sweep into the lead at the hairpin as Yanagida was forced to contend with both cold tyres and a slower GT300 car in his way.
The two ran in close formation for the remainder of the race, and when the chequered flag dropped, Motoyama was less than a second ahead of his rival as Nissan clinched its first 1-2 finish since round three at Fuji last season.
“I am very happy,” Motoyama said. “Sports car lovers from around the world have had their eyes on the new GT-R, and since I have been involved in the development of the Super GT-spec race machine from the beginning, I admit that I felt a lot of pressure to do well here.
![Hiroyuki Iiri/Ryo Orime - ORC Amemiya SGC-7 [Pic credit: Super GT]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/418401.jpg)
