It’s a sweltering day at Fuji Speedway and the grid is packed with TE27 Corolla Levins and Nissan Sunnys and (front-wheel-drive!) Cherrys. Watch Nobuhide Tachi win this round of the 1972 Japan Grand Prix Touring Car championships in his famous orange-on-white Toyota Celica 1600GT. That is all.
Excellent video! I’m wondering – why are they running anti-clockwise?
They run counter clock wise, just like Nascar, and pretty much everyone else, but my guess is that its becuase the cars are RHD?
Addison,
Tony is querying why the cars are running the circuit in the direction they are, which is opposite to the direction races are generally run at that particular circuit.
I think you’ll find theres both clockwise and counter clockwise circuits all over the world gentlemen, its really only ovals that are fundamentally ‘Go fast, turn left’ by nature.
wow. despite a catastrophic pile-up knocking out the pole-sitting nissans, a lone sunny manages to avoid the crash and pressure the the race leaders (incidentally, this is a toyota p.r. film)
I love that stuff. I just wish the director didn’t have his cameramen keep zooming in tight on the cars. A closeup of the number 67 inside a circle really doesn’t impart much racing action.
Fuji was such a great race track. Shame what they’ve done to it in the last few years. It went from one of the great racetracks to just another racetrack. One of my “I have all the money in the world” fantasies is to buy Fuji and restore it to it’s late-’60s configuration complete with the high banked corner that wasn’t used in this race.
awesome!! the celica 1600gt is my favorite!
Nice footage.
One issue that caught my attention was the overturned car left on the road. kind of dangerous for the other racers remaining in competition. Easier would be to just pull that car over the side, and leave it to rest off the road onto the side.
1972. No Mazdas ( rotaries ). Perhaps, and it must be, a smaller cc class.
Hey, not to start a debate, but arent there some TE37’s in the race too? Those came out in 75 no?
You sure? I never saw any.
And FWIW, it would have appeared in Japan in early ’74.
Nice to see these cars on the track racing, there are few photo’s of these cars around and to see them racing is awesome.
The 1600’s seemed to be unbeatable.
My Japanese isn’t good enough to read the names of the racers, but I can at least read the names of the cars in the finishing order.
1. Toyota Celica 1600GT
2. Toyota Celica 1600GT
3. Toyota Carolla Levin
4. Toyota Celica 1600GT
5. Sunny Excellent
6. Toyota Carolla Levin
7. Toyota Carolla Coupe
8. Toyota Carolla Coupe
9. Nissan Cherry
10. Nissan Cherry
Note a Prince/Nissan Clipper driving onto the scene at 1:11!
Also, Ebbro made a model of that scallopped Cherry X1. Now I know where it raced!
http://www.modelcarexpo.com/productimage/EB_43624a.jpg
If you guys ever run across info on this please post! (Those Cherry Coupes are so cool!)
I’ve seen this video before, but back then it was someone else who posted up the video in three parts where you could actually see the weighting of the Corollas before the race.
What I find most impressive is that the Levin TE27 actually manages to outrun a Celica. 😉
I posted those three videos here:
http://www.banpei.net/2011/02/28/video-1972-tsa-touring-car-race–fuji-speedway
I’m an SCCA member (and ex-racer). In my club, it was once common for tracks to run the occasional race anti-clockwise just so that the drivers would have a “different” circuit to run on (just for diversity’s sake). Most of that’s been eliminated through safety features, but I think they still do it at Hallett. http://www.hallettracing.net/
Hi,
This is obviously an old thread but I just bought the hasegawa kit of Tachi’s Celica and the video is nowhere to be found through any of the links.
Is anyone able to reupload? Or even just send the video directly?
I would love to see it…
Best regards,
Paul