The #17 Keihin Honda NSX-GT of Koudai Tsukakoshi and Takashi Kogure braved a wet second qualifying session to score pole position for Sunday’s Okayama GT 300km Race, the first round of the 2018 Autobacs Super GT Series.
Conditions for Saturday afternoon’s two-stage knockout qualifying were unseasonably cold, air temperatures between 8-9 degrees celsius, and a late rain shower in the morning practice session had washed all the rubber off the track.
Q1 in GT500 was a very close session, with all 15 cars covered by just 1.1 seconds. The #24 Forum Engineering Advan GT-R of Mitsunori Takaboshi led the session with a 1’18.160, a hugely impressive time for the GT300 graduate. And after troubles in practice, Naoki Yamamoto finished 2nd in the #100 Raybrig NSX-GT, ensuring that his co-driver Jenson Button would get a chance to run for pole in his first qualifying session as a full-time driver. The #17 Keihin NSX-GT, driven by Takashi Kogure, finished 3rd.
The #1 KeePer TOM’s Lexus LC500 will have to come up from 9th on the grid, after Nick Cassidy missed the top 8 in Q1 by just a tenth of a second – so he and defending co-champion Ryo Hirakawa will need to fight their way through the field to win back-to-back Okayama races. In fact, four of the six Lexus LC500s missed the cut for Q2, struggling in the cold conditions.
In GT300, Q1 was led by the #25 Hoppy Toyota 86 MC of Sho Tsuboi, followed by the #2 Syntium Apple Lotus Evora of Hiroki Katoh. The #11 Gainer Tanax GT-R of Katsuyuki Hiranaka finished third, ensuring one of the new Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3s would get into Q2 on debut.
The most notable car to miss the cut was the #0 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Nobuteru Taniguchi and Tatsuya Kataoka.
Taniguchi missed the top 14 by just 0.009 seconds, and the defending GT300 champions thus will have to come up through the midfield to repeat their victory. Other notables to miss Q2 included the #34 Modulo Kenwood Honda NSX GT3 (Ryo Michigami & Hiroki Otsu) and the #7 D’station Porsche 911 GT3-R (Tomonobu Fujii & Sven Müller).
In between sessions, the rain that had washed over Okayama in the morning returned.
This had put the mid-engined Honda NSX-GTs into prime position to win pole position, and it looked as if the #8 ARTA NSX-GT, which got into Q2 by just a tenth of a second, would take pole courtesy of a 1’27.058 from the returning Takuya Izawa.
But on a blistering flying lap in the wet conditions, Tsukakoshi – who’d been saving his best for his last attack, laid down a 1’26.905 and took pole position at the last second in a dramatic qualifier.
“The conditions changed so completely after Q1, so it was a difficult tire choice,” said Tsukakoshi of his pole run. Then I decided to completely warm up my tires and save everything for my last lap. Even on that last lap, the tires weren’t fully warmed up, but I was able to get pole position.”
“Things had been going well since the [March] tests and we drivers and the team all believed that we could get pole position if we gave it our all. For that reason, I was very happy that we were able to get pole position in this opening round.”
This is the first Super GT pole position for Keihin Real Racing since the 2014 Fuji GT 300km Race, and it is Tsukakoshi’s first pole position since the 2011 race at Okayama.
Izawa’s lap time was still good enough to lock down an all-Honda front row in GT500, and he and Tomoki Nojiri will start 2nd, ahead of the fastest Nissan, the #3 Craft Sports Motul GT-R (Satoshi Motoyama & Katsumasa Chiyo) in 3rd, and the #6 Wako’s 4CR LC500 (Kazuya Oshima & Felix Rosenqvist) in 4th.
Button did well to qualify the Raybrig NSX in 5th, ahead of João Paulo de Oliveira in the Forum Engineering GT-R in 6th. The #19 WedsSport Advan LC500 (Yuji Kunimoto & Kenta Yamashita) was 7th after leading the morning practice, and the #23 Motul Autech GT-R (Tsugio Matsuda & Ronnie Quintarelli) will line up 8th after trouble in Q2 prevented them from setting a representative lap.
The rain in the second half in qualifying also mixed things up in GT300, and in his Super GT debut, Marco Mapelli took the #88 ManePa Lamborghini Huracán GT3 to pole position with co-driver Kazuki Hiramine.
The Lamborghini Squadra Corse factory driver took pole with a 1’33.925, besting the #21 Hitotsuyama Audi R8 LMS of Richard Lyons and Ryuichiro Tomita, as Tomita fell just 0.157 seconds short of pole on an all-VAG front row in GT300.
“During the official practice in dry conditions, the machine felt difficult to handle, but then it changed to wet conditions for the Q2 session,” said Mapelli. “This was my first time driving on this course in wet conditions, but the feeling of the machine had improved. So, it turned out to be lucky rain for me.”
“Being able to win pole position in my first race in Japan makes me very happy. I am grateful to the team for the way they set up the car and to Yokohama for the tires they prepared for us.”
This is Team JLOC’s first pole position in Super GT since Yuhi Sekiguchi won GT300 pole for the Okayama GT 300km Race way back in 2010. Mapelli is also the first driver to win pole position in his debut Super GT race since Takashi Kobayashi in the 2010 Suzuka Summer Endurance Race (1000km)!
Tomita’s 2nd-place effort was followed by the #11 Gainer Tanax GT-R, driven to 3rd on the grid by Hironobu Yasuda and demonstrating the wet-weather strengths of the Dunlop tyres. The Bridgestone-clad #65 LEON Cvstos AMG (Haruki Kurosawa & Naoya Gamou) was fourth, and Takamitsu Matsui was fifth in the Hoppy 86 MC.
The #777 CarGuy ADA NSX GT3 put in an awesome showing in its debut, with Naoki Yokomizo finishing 8th in Q1, and rookie gentleman driver Takeshi Kimura finishing 11th in Q2 – a respectable showing in comparison to Kimura’s more experienced peers.
With the pole positions, the #17 Keihin NSX-GT and #88 ManePa Lamborghini also earn the first championship points of the season, scoring 1 point for winning pole position in their respective classes in advance of Sunday’s 82-lap feature race.
Images courtesy of the GT Association
