The season-ending Motegi GT Grand Final saw the crowning of two very popular sets of champions in both the GT500 and GT300 classes of the Autobacs Super GT Series.
Ryo Hirakawa and Nick Cassidy (above) took the GT500 Drivers’ Championship driving the #37 KeePer TOM’s Lexus LC500, and in GT300, the #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Nobuteru Taniguchi and Tatsuya Kataoka took a landmark championship title of their own.
Lexus Team KeePer TOM’s took victories at Okayama and Buriram, and finished every race in the points en route to winning the GT500 championship for 2017.
It is the long-awaited coronation for 23-year-old Hirakawa, one of the most exciting and gifted young drivers from his native Japan – already a success both at home, and in European racing in his young career.
“I thought that if we got this championship title I would be going wild, but in fact I was just so relieved when I got the checkered flag, and to tell the truth, I am having trouble finding words right now,” admitted an emotional Hirakawa after the race. “We won this title because the whole team came together and worked well with no mistakes, so I am just want to express my appreciation to everyone.”
When Hirakawa won the Formula 3 and Porsche Carrera Cup titles in 2012 as an 18-year-old rookie, many observers back home began to call him the “Japanese-born Schumacher”, a nod to the seven-time World Champion Michael, for his incredible maturity and relentless speed at the wheel.
Five years later, Hirakawa has enjoyed his greatest successes to date: Championships in both GT500 and the LMP2 class of the European Le Mans Series, a landmark sponsorship with Red Bull, and as 2018 approaches, the possibility of finally getting that long-awaited LMP1 drive with Toyota at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
For Cassidy, it is a landmark victory as he becomes the first driver from New Zealand to become a Super GT champion, in just his second season.
“As Hirakawa-san just said, all I can say is that I am relieved,” said Cassidy. “This is only my second season in GT500 but the team has put their trust in me. So, I worked hard to live up to that trust. All year it was a season of holding back when we needed to hold back and pushing hard when we needed to push. Today it was a race where we needed to conserve, but it went well and was a good race.”
Cut from the same cloth as McLaren, Amon, Hulme, and Dixon before him – Auckland native Cassidy has helped to bring Super GT to the attention of a passionate motorsport country in his native New Zealand. In doing so, he has also vindicated his switch to racing in Japan after setbacks in the European ladder to F1.
At 23 years, 2 months, 25 days, Cassidy is the youngest driver to win the GT500 Drivers’ Championship. He surpasses another foreign driver who made his legend with TOM’s in Super GT – the three-time Le Mans champion, André Lotterer, who won his first championship in 2006 just days shy of his 25th birthday.
This is the ninth GT500 Drivers’ Championship for Toyota Motor Corporation, and the fourth for TOM’s, coming on the 20th anniversary of their very first championships. However, this is the first championship won by the number 37 car, with their previous championships all being won by the number 36 team.
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And the common thread for TOM’s championship successes was the presence of team director Masanori Sekiya, the 1995 Le Mans winner, who has guided TOM’s to their last three championships from his directors’ chair atop the pit wall.
Goodsmile Racing with Team UKYO celebrated their tenth anniversary season in the best way possible – with a stellar championship-winning season in GT300.
Though they suffered setbacks at the two blue riband events in the season, the Fuji 500km and Suzuka 1000km, they maximized their efforts in the other six rounds to win their third championship in the last seven years.
The man who led them to the chequered flag in all three instances was Nobuteru Taniguchi, who wins his record-equalling third GT300 Drivers’ Championship at the same venue in which he won his first and second titles.
“To tell the truth, I feel more relief than happiness,” Taniguchi remarked. “We came to Motegi as the points leader, but in fact we were struggling and had no confidence in our advantage at all. While our team happened to be in the best position, in fact we have been working hard to avoid the worst possible situations. Today as well, things turned bad and we had to work hard with a strategy of hanging on to finish 3rd, but in the end the result was fortunate and we got the championship.”
It’s just another chapter in the incredible racing journey of Taniguchi, who started off as a street racer, who worked odd jobs as a garage mechanic and a freelance journalist, turned pro at 30 years old, and whose landmark success as a champion drift driver and circuit racer transcends Super GT itself.
He makes a case for being the greatest GT300 driver of all-time, equalling previous three-time champions Morio Nitta and Tetsuya Yamano – but what sets Taniguchi apart is his massive popularity, and how his success has helped to raise the standard of the GT300 class over the course of his career.
READ MORE: The Drifter – Nobuteru Taniguchi’s Journey to the Spa 24 Hours
Also winning his third GT300 drivers crown was Tatsuya Kataoka, who previously won in 2009 with Racing Project Bandoh, and in 2014 with GSR & Team Ukyo.
“I am very happy,” said Kataoka, who was a visible bundle of nerves in the garage as he watched the final laps unfold. “Today, it turned out that our job was to run away from pole position and hold on, and because I was able to communicate well with the GT500 class drivers, I was in a very comfortable position to drive and get to the finish as hoped. We won in the opening round and then, by struggling through the development work, we were able to win the championship.”
For the acclaim that his co-driver rightfully receives, Kataoka’s role in GSR’s sustained success has not gone unnoticed. Not for a driver who was a race winner in his brief stay in GT500, before settling in to become one of GT300’s all-time greats in his own right.
The 38-year-old has also made a successful step into team management – this year, he took the reins of Sunoco Team LeMans in the Super Formula Championship, and helped turn around the fortunes of a team that struggled all throughout 2016 in just his first year – with a little help from a “super rookie” named Felix Rosenqvist as well.
Respect should also be due – overdue, in fact – to team principal Ukyo Katayama, whose partnership with Goodsmile Racing helped turn the team from a struggling novelty act when they started, into a perennial championship contender since 2011.
Best known for a haphazard six-year run in Formula 1, and being one hour and a blown tyre away from winning Le Mans in 1999 with Toyota, Katayama’s leadership has been every bit as key to leading Goodsmile Racing to their three championships in seven years.
In addition, this is also the first Super GT championship of any kind for Mercedes-AMG – who’ve enjoyed incredible success in 2017 across multiple FIA GT3-based championships.
Images courtesy of the GT Association
