Nissan GTR Nismo Becomes the Fastest Production Car to Lap Tsukuba

If the ultimate proving ground for cars in the West is the Nurburgring-Nordschleiffe in Germany, what we have in the East is the Tsukuba Circuit in Japan.

Featured heavily in popular Japanese car show “Best Motoring”, as well as games like the Gran Turismo Series and Forza Motorsport, Tsukuba has gained massive popularity among car-nuts worldwide, and has somewhat become the ultimate proving ground for time attacks in Japan.

In fact, many racing teams from around the world frequent the circuit during track days and time attack events with the aim of setting the fastest time possible.

Currently, an event is held every week. Measuring 2.045 km long, the track has a large variety of corners, ranging from wide sweepers to hairpins. 

That being said, the 2020 Nissan GT-R Nismo has just broken the lap time record for production cars in a time attack on the Tsukuba Circuit on December 9th, 2019.

Nismo race driver Tsugio Matsuda drove the record breaking lap with a lap time of 59.3 seconds, beating the last production car track record which was held by the Porsche 911 GT3 RS (997) which did it in 1:00:07 minute 4 years ago.

Production cars aside, the fastest thing with 4 wheels to ever lap the Tsukuba Circuit is still the purpose-built Nissan Silvia S15 time attack machine, which belongs to Scorch Racing with Under Suzuki, which managed to clock a mighty quick lap time of 50:366 seconds.