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Ride Aboard a Totally Bananas Nissan GTP Car at Circuit of the Americas


Ride Aboard a Totally Bananas Nissan GTP Car at Circuit of the Americas

IMSA’s GTP class remains one of the high points for American sports car racing. The series drew some of the most bananas cars you’ll ever find. Horsepower figures for the crazier GTP occasionally suggest close to 1,000 ponies powered these wedge-shaped brutes with turbochargers often fueling the insanity. Aerodynamics were understood enough that big, rudimentary wings and spoilers and Venturi tunnels generated serious downforce, but horsepower and the drivers who wrangled it often ruled the day. For Nissan, that meant the GTP-ZX, which Theo Bean recently campaigned at the Sportscar Vintage Racing Association’s championship races at Circuit of the Americas.

Australian racer Geoff Brabham tamed the raucous GTP-ZX in 1988, knocking out eight consecutive victories in the middle of the season to take the championship. He’d do it again each of the next three years for Nissan. Fast-forward to early November with Theo Bean participating in the sports car prototype race. His GTP-ZX started the race alongside Randy Johnson’s modern LMP-style car, a 2007 Pescarolo. In theory, the Pescarolo should have left Bean through the twisty parts of the track, but Bean spends his opening lap wrestling with the car to stay with Johnson’s modern car.

The video offer a great look at how visceral driving a 1,000-horsepower car was nearly three decades ago.


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