Nissan Announces Matsuda’s SUPER GT Retirement

Long-time Nissan driver Tsugio Matsuda will retire from SUPER GT after next week’s season finale at Motegi, it has been announced.

Revealed on Thursday by Nissan, the news brings down the curtain on a glittering 20-year association between Matsuda and Nissan that began in 2006 and yielded back-to-back championship titles in the series’ top GT500 class in 2014 and ’15.

It also comes not long after Matsuda scored a record-extending 25th GT500 win in last month’s Sugo round for Kondo Racing alongside Teppei Natori.

“I achieved my 25th win in this year’s sixth round at Sugo, which made me feel I could keep going, but I also felt as if stepping down after achieving my goal was somehow in keeping with my character, so I came to this decision,” said Matsuda.

“Also, when I saw my young co-driver [Natori] score his first win at Sugo, I realised I was handing the baton to the next generation, which was a strange sensation which made feel both happy and sad at the same time.

“I want to express my sincerest gratitude to the fans that have supported me for a long time, as well as Nissan, NISMO, Team Impul, Kondo Racing and each tire manufacturer, with which I have lived good and bad times, all the sponsors that have supported me, everybody that has been involved in supporting my career, and my family.

“I love racing, the feeling of tension you can’t describe when everyone is cheering for you at the circuit, and most of all, driving cars. I may be graduating from SUPER GT, but I intend to continue as a racing driver.”

Matsuda made his GT500 debut in 2000 for the Team Take One McLaren squad before spending five years as a Honda driver with Nakajima Racing.

He then joined the factory NISMO team upon his switch to Nissan in 2006, before moving across to Team Impul in 2008, spending six seasons there before returning to NISMO in 2014 to win the championship alongside Ronnie Quintarelli.

After a successful title defense in 2015, he and Quintarelli remained teammates in the flagship No. 23 Nissan until the end of the 2023 season, when Matsuda moved across to Kondo Racing to partner Natori starting last season.

Outside of SUPER GT, Matsuda won back-to-back Formula Nippon titles in 2007-08 and made two starts in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, one in 2015 with the ill-fated Nissan GT-R LM NISMO project and the other for KCMG in the LMP2 class the next year.

Two years prior, Matsuda took a class win in the FIA World Endurance Championship’s Circuit of The Americas round driving for KCMG with Matt Howson and Richard Bradley at the wheel of a Nissan-powered Oreca 03R.

Matsuda becomes the third GT500 veteran to announce his retirement at the end of the year following Toyota’s Hiroaki Ishiura and Honda’s Takuya Izawa.

The news also comes just a year after long-time co-driver Quintarelli made his own decision to step down from SUPER GT.