Carlo van Dam in Japanse Super GT Series

Dutchman races Porsche in Japan's premier racing series

Gotemba - Dutchman Carlo van Dam will this year race in the Super GT Series, Japan's premier motor racing championship. Carlo (24) has joined the Japanese Direction team. Based in Gotemba, Direction will run a new Porsche 911 GT3 R in the GT300-class. Carlo's team mate is the Japanese driver Hiroshi Hamaguchi.

"When asked to do the complete Super GT Series this year, I was instantly excited of course", says Carlo, who in 2008 won the Japanese Formula 3 championship and competed in a number of Super GT-races for Toyota and Subaru over the past few years. Of Direction he says: "The team has an experienced crew and I know its engineer quite well already. Yokohama is our partner for tires and the reputation of Porsche in GT -races needs no explaining of course. Together with Hiroshi [Hamaguchi] I will try to get the best out of the season. I am looking forward to it, the Super GT Series is very popular and prestigious in Japan and it is great that I will be doing the full championship. The Porsche 911 GT3 R will arrive in Japan anytime now, next week we will test if at the circuit of Fuji for the first time. More testing is then planned for March."

The 2011 Super GT Series starts on Sunday April 3 at Okoyama and this year comprises eight rounds in Japan and Malaysia plus a special end-of-season race in November. The complete calendar can be found on supergt.net/en. Apart from Porsche, cars from Nissan, Toyota, Ferrari, Mazda, Honda and Aston Martin will race in the GT300-class.

For Carlo this new contract also means moving to Japan for the second time since 2008: "Next week I will move to Tokio. It will be a busy year anyway, as I also received offers from a car manufacturer and a team competing in other racing series. Soon I will be able to provide more details about that. In any case, this will be quite an intense season to which I am very much looking forward."

-source: carlovandam