Nissan GT500 Suzuka 1000km '30th Anniversary' Concept

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---Nissan GT-R GT500 Suzuka 1000km '99 'Skyline 30th Anniversary'

---Livery Concept/What-If

The emergence of the JGTC (All Japanese Grand Touring Championship) in the mid-to-late 1990's saw huge growth within the series, and full factory efforts akin to DTM. The Japanese 'Big 3' (Nissan, Toyota and Honda) all had major factory backed teams such as Impul, Mugen/Dome, Team Tom's and Team Kunimitsu. The major factory backed Nismo R34 GT-R, sponsored by American motor oil brand Pennzoil, became dominant in their 1998 campaign especially. With 2 wins and no finish worse than tenth, drivers Erik Comas & Masami Kageyama win the driver's and constructor's titles with a 17-point lead to Nakajima Racing's Tom Coronel and Koji Yamanishi.

Enter 1999, and Erik Comas one again gets the driver's title by four points from the Castrol Tom's duo of Takuya Kurosawa and Masanori Sekiya. However, with the Nissan's success over two years, there was one round that didn't count for the championship, accepted GT500 cars, but the Nissan GT5000s never raced at yet: the Suzuka 1000km.

Now a deviation from history, the Nismo team did race in the '99 edition, but a more stock-bodied N1-Class Skyline GT-R. However, one thing for this particular race was the hidden anniversary: the Skyline GT-R name was in it's 30th year. So what better way to celebrate but get the stacked GT500 team of Comas, Kageyama and Endurance driver Ralph Firman, and paint the car for the special race in a shiny golden wrap with notes of stripes from other 2000GT-R racers of the past.

How well could've they done? Hard to tell in this specific sense, since they don't actually enter the race till 2000. However, it would if anything be a great learning year, considering that both Honda and Toyota would bring their teams and cars as well, and the canonization of the race to pat championship points would possibly come sooner....