The #38 ZENT Cerumo Lexus LC500 of Yuji Tachikawa and Hiroaki Ishiura will start from pole position for Thursday’s running of the Golden Week classic, the Fuji GT 500km Race – the second round of the 2017 Autobacs Super GT Series.
Tachikawa scored the pole position with a best lap of 1:27.825, taking his 22nd career GT500 pole position and extending his personal all-time record of pole positions. It’s his ninth career pole at Fuji, a circuit in which the “Fuji-meister” has won a record seven times in his Super GT career.
With the pole position, Tachikawa and co-driver Hiroaki Ishiura gain one more bonus point in the GT500 Championship tables. That bonus point is the 1,000th career point for Tachikawa, who is now the third driver in Super GT history to reach the milestone, joining Morio Nitta and Satoshi Motoyama.
They’ll share the front row with two-time and defending Fuji 500km winners NISMO, after the #23 Motul Autech GT-R (Tsugio Matsuda/Ronnie Quintarelli) qualified second-fastest after just barely making it into Q2 by 0.023 seconds.
Daisuke Ito qualified the #36 au TOM’s LC500 fourth in his return to GT500 racing, behind the #6 Wako’s LC500 of Kazuya Oshima & Andrea Caldarelli in third, and ahead of the #1 Denso Kobelco SARD LC500 (Heikki Kovalainen/Kohei Hirate) in fifth.
GT500 debutant Kenta Yamashita qualified the #19 WedsSport Advan LC500 a respectable sixth in Q2, one place ahead of the #37 KeePer TOM’s LC500 of Ryo Hirakawa & Nick Cassidy, which leads the championship, but will carry 40 kilograms of Success Ballast this weekend. All six LC500s made it into Q2 at the home circuit for Toyota and Lexus.
The #8 ARTA NSX-GT (Tomoki Nojiri/Takashi Kobayashi) qualified eighth, best of all the Hondas, hoping to rebound from their humiliating DNS at Okayama after scoring a shock pole position.
In GT300, the #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Nobuteru Taniguchi and Tatsuya Kataoka scored the team’s first pole position (see the video below) since November 2011 at Twin Ring Motegi, extending their GT300 championship lead by a single point.
They’ll line up on the front row of the GT300 grid next to the #9 Gulf NAC Porsche 911 GT3-R (Jono Lester/Kyosuke Mineo), which will start from pole for the first time ever.
The #11 Gainer Tanax AMG (Katsuyuki Hiranaka/Björn Wirdheim) was third-fastest, after Sven Müller’s best time in the #33 D’Station Porsche 911 GT3-R was deleted at the end of Q2 due to track limit violations
Both the Mercedes-AMG GT3s and the Porsche 911 GT3-Rs look strong for the class victory at Fuji, as does the #51 JMS P.MU LM Corsa Lexus RC F GT3 (Yuichi Nakayama/Sho Tsuboi), starting fourth and carrying the banner for Toyota/Lexus Gazoo Racing.
Earlier on Wednesday, the #50 INGING & Arnage Racing Ferrari 488 GT3 withdrew from the event due to damage sustained in their accident at Okayama International Circuit in Round 1.
During practice, the #360 RunUp Nissan GT-R GT3 suffered a hard crash at the end of the frontstretch. Driver Atsushi Tanaka was uninjured, but the #360 GT-R is undergoing emergency repairs at Tomei Sports’ garage in Oyama (near Fuji Speedway) and may not take the start, which could bring the GT300 grid down to 28 cars for Thursday’s 110 lap race.
