The first pole position of the 2018 Pirelli Super Taikyu Series went to the #24 ThreeBond Nissan Gakuen GT-R of Yuudai Uchida, Tomonobu Fujii, and Kazuki Hiramine, who will lead a Nissan 1-2-3 on the grid for Sunday’s five-hour season-opening race at Suzuka Circuit.
The starting grid in Super Taikyu is determined in qualifying by the aggregate lap times between each team’s first two registered drivers, one amateur, and one professional.
Out of Session A, it was Satoshi Hoshino who was the fastest gentleman driver in the #777 D’station Porsche 911 GT3-R at a time of 2:03.072. Uchida was second quickest in the ThreeBond GT-R, followed by Teruhiko Hamano in the #99 Y’s Distraction GTNET GT-R.
In Session B, for the professional drivers with experience in Super GT and other top-level categories, the fastest car in the session was the #3 Endless Sports GT-R, driven by Hideki Yamauchi to a lap of 2:00.680, with Fujii right behind him in 2nd in the ThreeBond GT-R.
Though Uchida and Fujii were only second-quickest in their respective sessions, with Fujii unlucky to be caught up by a slower car on his final lap, the combined lap times of 4:04.300 (2:03.355 + 2:00.945) from the pro-am combination were enough to give Kondo Racing’s white and blue Nissan GT-R pole position for tomorrow’s race. The Endless GT-R of Yamauchi, Yuke Taniguchi, and Tsubasa Mekaru will line up on the front row with them in 2nd.
Kazuki Hoshino’s time in Session B put the Y’s Distraction GT-R third on the grid, completing Nissan’s clean sweep of the top three places on the grid, ahead of the D’station Porsche, which qualified fourth after a tough B-session for Le Mans winner Seiji Ara.
The best of Phoenix Racing Asia’s new Audi R8 LMS GT3s will line up 5th, the #82 of Alex Au, Shawn Thong, and Alex Yoong, but the bright pink #83 Audi (Lim Keong Wee/Marchy Lee/Melvin Moh) did not run at all on Saturday, and may not take the start on Sunday.
In the sub-class categories, the #31 Nissoku apr Porsche 911 GT3 Cup (Katsuhito “Jack” Ogawa/Masami Kageyama/Ryuichiro Tomita) won ST-1 class pole position and will line up 9th on the grid on Sunday.
ST-TCR were led by two Audi RS3 LMS, and the pole winners in that category were the #19 BRP/Audi Mie RS3 LMS (Hirobon/Yossy/Takuro Shinohara/Koichi Okumura). Hirobon’s time in Session A was enough to put pole position out of reach for the rest of the TCR field, and they’ll start 11th overall on the grid.
The #45 Prisma Illya RS3 LMS (Naoto Takeda/Takuya Shirasaka/Shozo Tagahara) was 2nd-quickest in the class, followed by the first of the new Honda Civic Type Rs, the #97 Modulo Civic TCR (Tadao Uematsu/Shinji Nakano/Hiroki Otsu/Takashi Kobayashi).
The #59 DAMD Motul Subaru WRX STI (Manabu Osawa/Hitoshi Gotoh/Takuto Iguchi/Mizuki Ishizawa) won pole position in ST-2, and the #38 muta Racing/Advics Lexus IS 350 (Makoto Hotta/Ryohei Sakaguchi) was quickest in ST-3.
In the classes of Group 2, ST-4 pole position went to the #86 TOM’s Spirit Toyota 86 (Takamitsu Matsui/Yuichi Nakayama/Sho Tsuboi), and ST-5 pole went to the #4 Bride Honda Fit (Junzo Shibatani/Yuya Ota/Toshiya Ito/Hidefumi Minami). That group may be short one car as well, after a spectacular fire for the #58 Wako’s Honda Integra Type-R (ST-4) of Koichi Kobayashi in free practice – the driver was unhurt, but the severity of the oil fire may render them a non-starter tomorrow.
Super Taikyu TV will broadcast the race live on YouTube, with the green flag set for 12:15 JST.
Photos courtesy of the Super Taikyu Organisation (STO).
