The 2003 All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship was the eleventh season of Japan Automobile Federation GT premiere racing. It was marked as well as the twenty-first 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 champions of 2003 were the #23 Xanavi

NISMO , abbreviated as Nismo, is a division of Nissan Motorsports & Customizing focused in motorsport and performance-oriented car models for Nissan. Nismo was initially a company, , formed in 1984 as a result of a merger of two motorsport departmen ...

Nissan Skyline GT-R The is a sports car based on the Nissan Skyline range. The first cars named "Skyline GT-R" were produced between 1969 and 1972 under the model code KPGC10, and were successful in Japanese touring car racing events. This model was followed by ...

team driven by

Satoshi Motoyama Satoshi Motoyama (本山哲 - Motoyama Satoshi; born March 4, 1971) is a Japanese professional racing driver and team manager. He is best known for racing in the Super GT Series, formerly known as the All-Japan Grand Touring Car Championship (JGT ...

and

Michael Krumm Michael Krumm (born 19 March 1970) is a German professional racing driver who won the 2011 FIA GT1 World Championship driving for JR Motorsports. Biography Born in Reutlingen, Krumm married Japanese tennis player Kimiko Date on 1 December 2001 ...

and the GT300 class champions were the #3 Hasemi Motorsports

Nissan Fairlady Z The Nissan Z-series is a model series of sports cars manufactured by Nissan in seven generations since 1969. The original Z was sold in October of 1969 in Japan as the at Nissan#Japan, Nissan Exhibition dealerships that previously sold the Ni ...

driven by

Masataka Yanagida Masataka Yanagida (born 4 June 1979, in Tokyo) is a Japanese racing driver. Career The son of successful racing driver Haruhito Yanagida, a runner-up in the Japanese Touring Car Championship, Masataka began his career in karting in 1993. In 199 ...

and

Mitsuhiro Kinoshita Mitsuhiro Kinoshita (born January 31, 1965) is a Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies ...

, neither of which had won a single race during the course of the season. The 2003 season saw the introduction of a comprehensive overhaul of the series' vehicle regulations. Manufacturers could now cut away the production vehicle's mainframe and replace the front and rear structures with pipe frame structures, which had also allowed for further suspension development. The engine could now be mounted freely in any position or any orientation, and the transmission could now be mounted freely in any position, allowing for the introduction of transaxle units. The size of the rear diffuser was reduced, and the underbody of the car had to be fitted with a flat bottom floor. Toyota had fitted their GT500 Supra with a 5.2 litre version of the naturally-aspirated 3UZ-FE V8 engine to replace the four-cylinder 3S-GTE. Honda retained the 3.5 litre C32B V6 engine, which was now mounted longitudinally behind the cockpit. Nissan changed from the RB26DETT inline-six cylinder engine to the VQ30DETT V6 engine in the middle of 2002, and retained the lighter aluminium-block engine into 2003.

Drivers and teams

GT500

Schedule

* Due to the

SARS Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral respiratory disease of zoonotic origin caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-1), the first identified strain of the SARS coronavirus species, ''sever ...

outbreak, round 4 of the championship, which was planned to be held at the

Sepang Circuit The Sepang International Circuit ( ms, Litar Antarabangsa Sepang) is a motorsport race track in Sepang, Selangor, Malaysia. It is located approximately south of Kuala Lumpur, and close to Kuala Lumpur International Airport. It hosted the Fo ...

on June 20 and 21, was cancelled and later replaced by a round at

Fuji Speedway is a motorsport race track standing in the foothills of Mount Fuji, in Oyama, Suntō District, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. It was built in the early 1960s. In the 1980s, Fuji Speedway was used for the FIA World Sportscar Championship and nati ...

. The replacement Fuji round featured a unique format of two heat races, each featuring a sprint race for one of the team's drivers. The combined results of both heats would determine the overall winner of the round.

Season results

Standings

GT500 class

Drivers' standings

;Scoring system:

Teams' standings

For teams that entered multiple cars, only the best result from each round counted towards the teams' championship.

GT300 class (Top 5)

Drivers

References

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 ...