A full field of 45 cars and 103 drivers are on the entry list for the 46th and final running of the International Suzuka 1000km, the sixth round of the 2017 Autobacs Super GT Series, on August 26-27.
With this being the longest race on the calendar, thirteen of these teams – including two teams in the GT500 class – will field an additional third driver for the race.
The two headlining acts for the race will be Super GT newcomers, and ex-Formula 1 stars, Jenson Button and Kamui Kobayashi.
Button, the 2009 World Drivers’ Champion (above), will pilot the #16 Motul Mugen Honda NSX-GT with regular drivers Hideki Mutoh and Daisuke Nakajima. This is Button’s endurance sports car racing debut, after seventeen-plus seasons in F1 where he was one of the most popular drivers in Japan through his time with Honda-powered teams.
Kobayashi (below), the new lap record holder at the Circuit de la Sarthe, will make his Super GT debut piloting the #19 WedsSport Advan LC500 with co-drivers Yuhi Sekiguchi and Yuji Kunimoto.
He’s been racing with Toyota in LMP1 and in the Japanese Super Formula Championship since 2015, and last month he made his GT3 racing debut at the Spa 24 Hours.
Over in GT300, there’s several noteworthy additions to the field – eleven third drivers in total, plus the return of top series rookie Sven Müller.
Müller has taken a three-month “leave of absence” from Super GT due to commitments in the ADAC GT Masters, but the young Porsche Motorsport factory driver will be back aboard the #33 D’station Porsche 911 GT3-R, with Tomonobu Fujii alongside.
The list of international third drivers in GT300 is short, headlined by former F1 pilot Christian Klien (Team Taisan SARD) and BMW factory racer Augusto Farfus (BMW Team Studie).
Former Porsche Carrera Cup champions Tsubasa Kondo (VivaC Team Tsuchiya) and Yuya Motojima (#87 Team JLOC) will be two young drivers to watch, the latter coming off a two-race spell with D’station Racing in place of the absent Müller and the injured André Couto.
The rest of the third drivers are relatively older and more experienced – in there you have former GT500 Drivers’ Champion Masami Kageyama (Dijon Racing), a former GT300 champion in Takayuki Aoki (Tomei Sports), and two 16-year series veterans in Koji Yamanishi (#88 Team JLOC) and Shogo Mitsuyama (Saitama Toyopet GreenBrave).
Hiroshi Hamaguchi (Cars Tokai Dream28) comes back from the International GT Open championship, and Masayuki Ueda (Rn-sports) and Tetsuji Tamanaka (Team Mach) come off the directors’ chairs and back into the cockpit of their respective cars.
Photos: Team Mugen, Toyota
