Nissan GT-R Returning to Nurburgring 24 Hours

Godzilla may be heading to the movie theaters soon, but he’ll also be making an appearance in Germany next month at the world famous Nurburgring.

Nissan has announced that the GT-R will return to the Nordschleife by competing at this year’s 24 hour endurance race. This will be the Japanese automaker’s first official assault on the event in recent years, though the GT-R has competed on behalf of other teams. Leading the charge will be a pair of race cars from Nissan GT Academy Team RJN, which will run in collaboration with NISMO Factory engineers from Japan. In addition, another GT-R will enter from Schulze Motorsport.

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GT Academy Germany Judge Nick Heidfeld will compete in the number-80 GT-R NISMO GT3 along with recent GT Academy winner Florian Strauss, Lucas Ordonez and Alex Buncombe. The number-30 GT-R NISMO GT3 will feature Michael Krumm, Kazuki Hoshino, Katsumasa Chiyo and Tetsuya Tanaka.

The third vehicle from Schulze Racing will have Kazanori Yamauchi at the helm, the creator of the Gran Turismo series. Nissan announced that he will be joined by the 2009 winner of GT Academy, Jordan Tresson.

“The Nurburgring 24 Hours is a special event for Nissan,” said Darren Cox, Global Head of Brand, Marketing & Sales, NISMO. “To compete at the Nordschleife will be a very proud moment for everyone involved as we think about the long line of road specification GT-Rs and now the GT-R NISMO that have grown up there. It is important to show our fans and customers again that there is cross over between road cars and race car development at Nissan. There is no better evidence of that than the Japanese based NISMO engineers huge commitment to this global effort.”