At the Thunder Hill Raceway (3 miles/4.8km per lap) near Sacramento California, the longest endurance race in the world; the "25 Hours of Thunder Hill", was held from December 5th to the 6th. "Gran Turismo" series producer Kazunori Yamauchi drove and successfully completed this 25 hour endurance race.

The team Mr. Yamauchi drove for was the world famous "Spoon Sports", who are renowned for tuning of Honda cars. His team mates were professional racing drivers Tatsuru Ichishima, Naoki Hattori, and motor journalist, Sam Mitani.
Their machine was the Group N spec Civic Type R 4 door racing car, in the yellow and blue livery of Spoon Sports. The car was powered by a K20A engine tuned to 250ps, mounted in a 1120kg body and combined with a 6 speed manual transmission.

The course layout of Thunder Hill, is comparable to the Suzuka Circuit but located in a hilly area. It is a mid to high speed track with corners that can be cleared in 3rd to 5th gear, with lots of ups and downs. In a single lap there are 3 blind jumping spots, all of which are in mid corner and making this course extremely difficult. Because of these factors, this track requires you to control the car not just horizontally as on a normal track, but three dimensionally.

Plagued by several penalties during the race such as having to modify the exhaust tip due to exceeding exhaust noise regulations, and a penalty for improper fueling, they were forced into the pit for almost an hour. But the car itself had no problems at all, and finished the race in 23rd place overall out of 66 cars, 7th in its class.