After victory in the ILMC LMP2 class and competing at 24 Hours of Le Mans last year Lucas Ordonez added another legendary endurance race to his racing CV as part of the Team GT Academy team at the Nurburgring 24 Hours.
The Spaniard – the original winner of the Nissan Playstation GT Academy – was joined by Kazunori Yamauchi, Yasukichi Yamamoto and Tobias Schulze in the production based Nissan GT-R in the SP8T class of the 180 car field for the race which took place on the 25km Nordschleife.
“I started my first stint quite carefully,” said Ordonez. “It is a lot of fun to overtake on the Nordschleife so I had a great time but I was also aware that a lot of big crashes were happening in the opening stages so I was careful too.”
He continued; “after having such a good run it the night, my morning shift was a real eye-opener. The temperature went up quite quickly and this really changed the handling compared to at night. It was still great to drive but it was mentally tough as I really had to concentrate and feel what the car was doing.”
Racing against top teams from all the big German manufacturers in GT3-spec cars the foursome and the production based car finished an impressive 30th overall.
A second Nissan GT-R – driven by Michael Krumm, Toshio Suzuki, Kazuki Hoshino and Tetsuya Tanaka finished 99th overall.