The 1996 All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship was the fourth season of Japan Automobile Federation GT premiere racing. It was marked as well as the fourteenth season of a JAF-sanctioned sports car racing championship dating back to the

All Japan Sports Prototype Championship The , abbreviated as JSPC, formed by the Japan Automobile Federation, was a domestic championship which took place in Japan for Group C and IMSA GTP prototype cars and also featured cars that were eligible for touring car racing in its earlier yea ...

. The GT500 class champion was the #61 Team Lark

McLaren F1 GTR The McLaren F1 GTR is the racing variant of the McLaren F1 sports car first produced in 1995 for grand touring style racing, such as the BPR Global GT Series, FIA GT Championship, JGTC, and British GT Championship. It was powered by the natur ...

driven by

David Brabham David Brabham (born 5 September 1965) is an Australian professional racing driver and one of the most successful and experienced specialists in sports car racing. He has won three international Sports Car series and is one of four Australians t ...

and John Nielsen, and the GT300 class champion was the #26

Team Taisan Jr Team Taisan (チーム・タイサン, stylized as Team TAISAN) is a Japanese auto racing team founded in 1983 by Yasutsune "Ricky" Chiba and owned by the Taisan Industrial Company. Most active in the Super GT Series, formerly known as the All J ...

Porsche 964 The Porsche 964 is the company's internal name for the Porsche 911 manufactured and sold between 1989 and 1994. Designed by Benjamin Dimson through January 1986, it featured significant styling revisions over previous 911 models, most prominently ...

driven by Keiichi Suzuki and Morio Nitta. For the 1996 season, the names of the two classes of the JGTC were changed to GT500 and GT300, replacing the previous GT1 and GT2 names from the 1994 and 1995 season. This season also mandated two-driver teams for all races. On November 17, the series held its first non-championship "All-Star Race" at Central Circuit. The arrival of the McLaren F1 GTRs, prepared by

Team Goh Team Goh Motorsports is a Japanese auto racing team founded by Kazumichi Goh in 1996. They currently compete in the Japanese Super Formula Championship. History Initially competing in the All-Japan Grand Touring Car Championship (JGTC), Team G ...

, was the biggest story of the 1996 season. The number 60 McLaren of

Naoki Hattori is a motoring journalist and racing driver from Japan. After he won the Japanese Formula Three, Formula 3 championship in 1990, he failed to pre-qualify for two Formula One Grands Prix with Enzo Coloni Racing Car Systems, Coloni in 1991 as a late ...

and

Ralf Schumacher Ralf Schumacher (born 30 June 1975) is a German former racing driver. He is the younger brother of seven-time Formula One World Champion Michael Schumacher, and the pair are the only siblings to each win Formula One races. Schumacher began kart ...

led a 1-2 finish at the season opening round at Suzuka. However, despite winning three races, Hattori and Schumacher also suffered three retirements, and were beaten to the title by their senior teammates, Brabham and Nielsen. Despite massive performance handicaps instituted by the GTA, the two McLaren F1 GTRs combined to win four of the six championship races, and won pole position and set fastest lap in all six. At odds with the GTA over further performance handicaps that were to be proposed, Team Goh withdrew from the series after the championship finale at Miné Circuit, and after an aborted attempt to return in 2006, they would not return to the series until 2019. The season also featured the debut of the

Honda NSX The Honda NSX, marketed in North America as the Acura NSX, is a two-seat, mid-engined coupe sports car manufactured by Honda. The origins of the NSX trace back to 1984, with the HP-X (Honda Pininfarina eXperimental) concept, which was a mid-eng ...

in the series, although direct factory support would not appear until the following season; as such, the car entered by Team Kunimitsu was mostly mechanically identical to the

1995 24 Hours of Le Mans The 1995 24 Hours of Le Mans was the 63rd Grand Prix of Endurance, and took place on 17 and 18 June 1995 in one of the wettest races in the event's history with about 17 hours of steady rain. The race was won by the #59 McLaren F1 GTR driven by J ...

GT2 class winner.

Schedule

Season results

Point Ranking

GT500 Class

Drivers

GT300 Class (Top 5)

Drivers

External links

Super GT/JGTC official race archive

{{Super GT seasons Super GT seasons

JGTC Super GT (stylized as SUPER GT) is a grand touring car racing series that began in 1993. Launched as the , generally referred to as either the JGTC or the All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship, the series was renamed to Super GT in 2005. It is ...