Put simply, it was the perfect weekend for Super GT stalwarts Autobacs Racing Team Aguri (ARTA) at Fuji Speedway.
After taking pole positions for their respective classes on Saturday, the #8 ARTA Honda NSX-GT of Tomoki Nojiri and Takashi Kobayashi led 64 of 66 laps of the Fuji GT 300km Race en route to scoring Honda’s first GT500 class victory since 2015, ending a two-year winless drought for the manufacturer, and scoring their first GT500 win as a team since the July 2013 race at Sportsland Sugo.
Simultaneously, the #55 ARTA BMW M6 GT3 of Shinichi Takagi and Sean Walkinshaw won in similarly dominant fashion, leading 53 out of 62 laps and taking ARTA’s third successive GT300 victory from pole at the summer race at Fuji.
In a race free of major incidents, Nojiri led the way from start to finish of his 31-lap opening stint, setting the fastest lap of the race along the way. Kobayashi took over after their mid-race pit stop, and even after hitting traffic, and a heart-in-mouth slide through the 100R corner with five laps to go, he still had more than enough pace in hand to seal ARTA’s outstanding double victory by 1.5 seconds – and end a frustrating run of 15 races over 23 months in between wins for Honda.
It’s Nojiri’s first career Super GT victory in his third season in GT500, and for Kobayashi, it’s his first GT500 win since returning to the premier class. His last win came in his debut Super GT race, the 2010 Suzuka Summer Special (1000km) a race for which he won pole position, but never actually drove a stint during the race itself – this time, it was a proper win.
“I am very pleased at my first victory, and at the same time, I am emotional to the point that it is starting to affect my judgement,” Nojiri laughed, after the race. “It being the 20th anniversary of ARTA, I have been telling myself that this year, I must accomplish something, which at times for me has been a burden. With this first victory, here, today, I am both excited, and relieved.”
“I am simply full of gratitude toward everyone I know,” Kobayashi added. “I was able to return to the GT500 after experiencing the GT300 but for me this was only the start, I wanted to win, here. I am all too aware that so much is lacking from my driving, and talking to Nojiri-san, I have worked at improving on it. This victory stems from the support of the many people of this team. Yes, I am ‘grateful.”
The battle for second place went down to the wire between the #23 Motul Autech NISMO GT-R (Tsugio Matsuda/Ronnie Quintarelli) and the #38 ZENT Cerumo Lexus LC500 (Yuji Tachikawa/Hiroaki Ishiura).
It looked as if the Fuji 500km-winning ZENT LC500 would eventually get past the Motul GT-R for second place, but thanks to an outstanding defensive driving display from Matsuda, the Michelin-clad GT-R held off every advance from Ishiura’s Lexus – and finished second by just six-tenths of a second at the line.
All three manufacturers got a car on the podium, in a race where Lexus’ outstanding winning streak of five races in a row (dating back to 2016), and four to open the 2017 season, came to an end at the hands of Honda.
Coming out ahead of another close battle for fourth place was the #36 au TOM’s LC500 (Kazuki Nakajima/James Rossiter), with the #12 Calsonic Impul GT-R (Hironobu Yasuda/Jann Mardenborough) scoring a season-best fifth place finish, ahead of the second Lexus Team TOM’s car, the #37 KeePer TOM’s LC500 (Ryo Hirakawa/Nick Cassidy). Hirakawa and Nakajima sparred wheel-to-wheel for several laps for fourth, but eventually the #37 fell to the “flagship” #36 team.
After the race, Hirakawa admitted that he yielded 5th place to the Calsonic GT-R to avoid further fuel-flow restrictions as part of their Success Ballast going into the Suzuka 1000km in three weeks.
And with the result, James Rossiter moves to the top of the GT500 Drivers’ Championship with 44 points, by one point over the #6 Wako’s 4CR LC500 (Kazuya Oshima/Andrea Caldarelli) which finished in ninth. Hirakawa & Cassidy are two points back of the lead, and the duos of Matsuda/Quintarelli and Tachikawa/Ishiura are each three points back.
The #19 WedsSport Advan LC500 (Yuhi Sekiguchi/Yuji Kunimoto) and the #100 Raybrig NSX-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Takuya Izawa) clawed its way up from the back of the class grid to finish seventh and eighth respectively, and the defending GT500 champions’ #1 Denso Kobelco SARD LC500 (Heikki Kovalainen/Kohei Hirate) completed the points-scorers in tenth.
Completing the second half of ARTA’s double victory was the #55 ARTA BMW M6, which scored the team’s third win in a row at the summer race at Fuji, previously winners in 2015 with the Honda CR-Z GT, and again last year with their then-new BMW M6 GT3.
The ARTA BMW M6 was virtually unassailable in the hands of the veteran former GT300 champion Takagi, and at the end of a great 35-lap opening stint, it was the series rookie Walkinshaw’s turn to close out the win in what he described as an ‘awesome Sunday cruise’.
“It feels absolutely amazing to have won!” Takagi said after the race. “Director Aguri has been telling us repeatedly to go “for the title!” this year, as it is the 20th anniversary of our team, and I cannot help but feel that the double pole-to-win victory that we were able to achieve here, today, comes very close to it. I would like to that my team, for providing us this amazing car, and Sean Walkinshaw, for completely outdoing himself.”
The win was a personal milestone for 47-year-old Takagi, who took his eighteenth career GT300 class race win – drawing him level with his long-time former co-driver and three-time champion, Morio Nitta, for the most career wins of all-time.
For Walkinshaw, the son of the legendary driver and team owner Tom Walkinshaw, it’s his first career Super GT win in just his fifth start.
“I am very excited by our victory,” Walkinshaw said. “The car felt great, and the tires gave a steady performance all through the race. Our team supported us with perfect work in the pit. Above all, Takagi-san’s driving that gave us a great advantage in the first leg of the race was excellent. I am grateful for this to all the people who are involved with the team, and for giving us this victory, today.”
Finishing second, in their first race after a star-struck Spa 24 Hours debut, was the #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Nobuteru Taniguchi & Tatsuya Kataoka – a deceptive 1 lap behind the ARTA BMW on the timing sheet, due to the way they took the chequered flag in relation to the ARTA NSX in GT500.
With the result, and a late mechanical retirement for the #25 VivaC Toyota 86 MC (Takamitsu Matsui/Kenta Yamashita), Taniguchi & Kataoka are now in the lead of the GT300 Drivers’ Championship by nine points over Matsui & Yamashita – but they’ll now have to drive the Suzuka 1000km on the maximum 100 kilograms of Success Ballast.
Gambling on taking fuel only on their stop paid off for the #31 Toyota Prius apr GT (Koki Saga/Rintaro Kubo), which scored their best finish of 2017 – as well as a career-first podium for the young sophomore driver Kubo.
The #61 Subaru BRZ R&D Sport (Takuto Iguchi/Hideki Yamauchi) finished a respectable fourth, the #9 Gulf NAC Porsche 911 GT3-R (Jono Lester/Kyosuke Mineo) picked up a solid fifth place, and even after fading from their front row start, sixth place was still a good run for the #7 Studie BMW M6 GT3 (Jörg Müller/Seiji Ara).
There were a few big movers through the field: The #88 ManePa Lamborghini Huracán GT3 (Manabu Orido/Kazuki Hiramine), which started 16th and finished seventh, the #33 D’station Porsche 911 GT3-R (Tomonobu Fujii/Yuya Motojima), finishing eighth after starting 18th, and the #51 JMS P.MU LM Corsa Lexus RC F GT3 (Yuichi Nakayama/Sho Tsuboi), which started 17th, and finished ninth
The #21 Hitotsuyama Audi R8 LMS (Richard Lyons/Masataka Yanagida) completed the points in tenth, finally scoring the team’s first points after a bitterly disappointing first half of 2017 for Audi’s customer teams as a whole.
The double win was ARTA’s first since July 2013 at Sportsland SUGO. The double pole position was their first since October 2015 at the Autopolis circuit. Put it all together, and its the first time in Super GT history that a single team scored a double win from pole, and fittingly, it came in the twentieth anniversary season for Autobacs Racing Team Aguri.
The next round will be the 46th and final running of the International Suzuka 1000km on August 27th.
Images courtesy of the GT Association
