The historic first-ever victory for the Lamborghini Murciélago RG-T, in last weekend's Suzuka 300km, came courtesy of Team JLOC, a small, dedicated band of Japanese Lamborghini enthusiasts.

The story of Team JLOC on the track starts back in the early 1990s. Teruaki Terai, a JLOC member and a designer of racing cars, decided to participate racing with Lamborghini car although he didn't have a racing car or sponsors. In 1993, he acquired a fire-damaged Lamborghini Countach. He and a friend, M. Mearashi, a former car magazine editor, had planned to enter JGTC starting inn 1994. Their plan was to reinforce the burnt chassis and using a mono -plastic body.

By spring of 1994 though, the new race car was still not completed. They couldn't enter the opening race at Fuji, but the news of participation of Lamborghini Countach in the JGTC race attracted the organizer's attention, and they were requested to enter Fuji race. Then Mearashi invited Satoshi Ikezawa, a cartoonist and racing driver, and he negotiated with Art Sport to supply a racing car. Mr. Terai obtained a famous driver in Takao Wada, and sponsor, Rain X.

Art Sport supplied a road-going Countach. The car was very heavy, quite unsuitable racing even after removing the interior. Moreover the engine, clutch, transmission and differential were of normal specifications. The only modifications were to the brake and the race specification wheels. The car was now ready to race. They invited Isao Noritake, the Chairman of the JLOC, to be the sole director and the team structure was quickly established. The new team participated all five races of the 1994 season with director Terai and drivers Wada and Ikezawa. The car finished two races.

The team then decided to move forward a stage and develop the fearsome Diablo, Lamborghini's road successor to the Countach, into a full racing car. Mr. Terai did his utmost to move the project forward, even though he was now suffering from a serious disease, while Naotake Tamura sponsored the building cost of the new car. In March 1995, the race car, which was christened the Diablo Jota was completed, and was able to participate the Japanese GT Championship right from the first race. Sadly though Terai died from cancer on August 1995. In its first season of racing (1995) the Diablo Jota completed four races out of the five races in the series, while the next year the team finished two of the five races. The team then decided it was time to develop their next race car.

In 1997, Hisashi Wada succeeded Ikezawa and raced alongside Wada. The car they used was the newly developed Diablo GTR which featured a Hewland sequential 6-speed gearbox fitted to the engine. However they were only able to finish two of the five races due to continual problems with the new gearbox.
 

Highlight of the 1997 season was a ninth place finish in the first race heat of the 'All Star Race' at the Twin Motegi Ring circuit, the car briefly showing  a glimpse of its speed. The next year Naohiro Furuya replaced Wada in the cockpit while Shunichi Funaki became a director. The car was greatly modified and renamed as the Diablo GT1. The team finished all six JGTC races, with ninth position being their best result. In 1999, the team organization remained pretty much the same as the previous year and the team finished four out of seven races. The team claimed twelfth position after having serious problems with the car in the 'All Star Race' held at Autopolis circuit.

For 2001, a new car named the Diablo JGT-1 was debuted by Team JLOC in the JGTC with Naohiro Furuya and former F1 driver Marco Appicella as the drivers. Isao Noritake, prominent team owner, was appointed as a director and a Tsunetoshi Terai (brother of the late Mr. Teruaki Terai, the team's founder) came in as chief mechanic. After several further seasons with the Diablo JGT-1, in 2004 Team JLOC replaced it with the brand new Murciélago RG-T which had been developed in conjunction with the factory and Reiter Engineering. It arrived just in time to take part practice for round 5 of the Japanese GT Series at Sugo in May, but a lack of spare parts mean the car had to be withdrawn. A second Murciélago R-GT, belonging to Malaysian outfit Amprex Motorsports, arrived in the series very briefly, but the inability of the car to compete with the Japanese GT500 teams saw Amprex swiftly depart the scene while Team JLOC plodded on at the back of the grid with only another European machine, the Prodrive-built Ferrari 550 Maranello for company.

Last year Team JLOC, who harbour ambitions of competing in the Le Mans 24 Hours, entered two Reiter Engineering-supported cars in the Monza 1000kms, a round of the Le Mans Endurance Series. This year the Murciélago RG-1 (as it is called by Team JLOC) was homologated into the smaller Super GT class known as GT300, instantly turning the car into a highly competitive proposition.