The mighty Castrol Tom’s Toyota Supra will be making its debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The car is the machine which carried Michael Krumm and Pedro de la Rosa to the hard-fought 1997 Japanese GT Championship.

As well as being one of the mainstays of the high-horsepower series in the 1990s, the Toyota Supra has also achieved international celebrity in the hands of millions of Sony PlayStation Gran Turismo game players, who have delighted in "racing" the car for themselves.

The 1997 JGTC series saw the Supra lining up against competition in the GT500 class that include Porsche GT1 and 2 models, the Honda NSX, Lamborghini Diablo and Nissan Skyline. The car was equipped with the 3SG engine, a development of the 16-valve, 2.0-litre unit also used in IMSA competition (the 503 engine) and in the World Rally Championship Toyota Corolla (3SGTE). Competition regulations permitted the Supra’s engine to be tuned to more than 480bhp.

The Supra made an early impact in the 1997 JGTC series, with the car of Krumm taking pole position with a new qualifying lap record at Fuji in the second race of the season, leading a train of five Supras.

With two victories and a second place to their credit, Krumm and de la Rosa still had to battle for honours in the final, sixth race of the championship at Sugo. At the end of the day they tied on points with Masahiko Kageyama, but clinched the title by dint of a superior number of podium finishes.

The Castrol Tom’s Toyota Supra will be driven at the Goodwood Festival of Speed by former Formula 1 driver Ukyo Katayama. For more biographical information about Katayama, please refer to the separate press release on the Toyota TS020.