The revival of the Suzuka GT 300km Fan Festival promised to be a frantic, full-tilt race throughout. And not only did it meet those expectations, it exceeded them.
The #8 ARTA Honda NSX-GT of Tomoki Nojiri and Takuya Izawa may have won from pole position, but they had to fend off relentless pressure from a chasing #100 Raybrig NSX-GT of Naoki Yamamoto and Jenson Button throughout the middle stages of the race to claim their first win of the 2018 season in the GT500 class.
Conditions were almost perfect for the race on Sunday afternoon, with clear skies and comfortable temperatures of around 26°C for the start of the race, and a great crowd of over 33,000 spectators for Sunday. That start, however, was delayed 40 minutes due to a timing and scoring failure around noon JST (local time). As a result, the start time was pushed from 14:40 to 15:20, but the race would still to run the scheduled 52 lap distance.
Izawa started the race in the bright orange ARTA NSX, and from the drop of the green flag, he started right away on opening a massive lead up front. Within five laps, Izawa was leading the Raybrig NSX, driven by the 2009 World Champion Button, by 5 seconds. After 12 laps, he’d opened up a lead of over ten seconds over the field, and it seemed as if the ARTA NSX would cruise from there, as Button had to fend off a hard-charging Nick Cassidy in third, driving the #1 KeePer TOM’s Lexus LC500.
But on lap 13, Heikki Kovalainen in the #39 Denso Kobelco SARD LC500 spun exiting the second Degner Curve, and came to a stop in the approach to the Hairpin Curve. With Kovalainen’s stricken Denso LC500 stopped in a tricky part of the circuit, the Safety Car was deployed to retrieve it.
That undid all of Izawa’s work at the start of the race to put a gap on the field. But when the race restarted again on Lap 19, Izawa and the ARTA NSX got a superb restart, breaking clear of Button and the rest of the field. The pit window had opened up by this stage in the race, and Team Kunimitsu took that opportunity to pit the Raybrig NSX at the end of the lap. Button had slipped to 3rd behind Cassidy’s KeePer LC500 on the restart, but a great pit stop put co-driver Naoki Yamamoto back out and kept them in the fight.
On lap 24, Hideki Mutoh spun off at speed and crashed into the sponge barriers at the tricky Degner Curve complex. Mutoh was thankfully uninjured in the crash, able to walk away from his stricken #16 Motul Mugen NSX-GT. Expecting a second Safety Car intervention, the ARTA NSX and KeePer LC500, as well as Jann Mardenborough in the #12 Calsonic Impul GT-R, all dived into the pits at once.
The Safety Car never came out, but a comparatively poor outlap from Nojiri in the ARTA NSX closed their lead over Yamamoto in the Raybrig NSX to just a half a second by the time the new Bridgestone tyres on the ARTA NSX came up to temperature.
Nojiri now had the benefit of clean air and fresher rubber, but the royal blue Raybrig NSX of Yamamoto, consistently hounded his Honda rival as they weaved through the circuit and the slower GT300 traffic, keeping the lead margin within a half-second for the next twenty laps. Yamamoto, a star performer at Suzuka during his career, stayed tail-to-nose with Nojiri.
But as the race wound down to the final ten laps, the Raybrig NSX’s pace began to fall off rapidly. And that would give Nojiri more than enough distance to close out the victory from pole position for Autobacs Racing Team Aguri (ARTA), by a final margin of 2.7 seconds.
This was ARTA’s first Super GT race win at Suzuka since Ralph Firman, Yuji Ide, and Takashi Kobayashi won the Suzuka GT Summer Special (1000km) in 2010, and their first win in the 300km race since 2001 with Keiichi Tsuchiya and Katsutomo Kaneishi. Another great Suzuka moment for team principal Aguri Suzuki, the man who made history here in 1990 when he became the first Japanese driver to score a Formula 1 World Championship podium finish.
In the post-race interviews, Izawa held none of his excitement back over the victory, and Nojiri almost burst into tears in the paddock.
“Today I pushed hard from the start,” said Izawa, who collected his sixth career GT500 victory and his first at Suzuka in 14 starts between the 300km and 1000km. “But then the Safety Car came out and I realized anew that you can’t win Super GT races on speed alone. But somehow I was able to turn the car over to Nojiri-san with our lead intact and he was able to keep that lead to end. I am very happy!”
This was also Izawa’s first win since returning to ARTA this off-season, having been displaced from Team Kunimitsu for Jenson Button this year and returning to ARTA for the first time since 2009.
Describing his closing stint of the race, Nojiri said: “On my out lap after taking over from Izawa-san, the fact that I was able to defend our lead was a decisive point in the race. But with Yamamoto-san (No.100 RAYBRIG NSX-GT) chasing me from behind I was afraid that he would come up and try to pass me, because I have seen him race strongly like that many times.”
“But I concentrated on pushing to the front. At one point he was closing in on me, but it seems that in the end we had the advantage.” This is Nojiri’s second career GT500 race victory.
Button and Yamamoto finished a close second, to take their second podium finish of the season, and bringing up the back end of a Honda 1-2 finish at the Honda-owned Suzuka Circuit.
More importantly, they go into the month-long break before the fourth round of the season in Buriram, Thailand with the lead in the GT500 championships by a single point. It’s Yamamoto’s sixth career Super GT podium at Suzuka, and for Button, his second podium in four career starts – at the place where his sports car racing career began in last August’s 1000km.
With a cool and collected final stint driven by Ryo Hirakawa, the KeePer TOM’s LC500 of Hirakawa and Cassidy came home in third position, the second podium of the year for the reigning GT500 champions. Another solid result as the young lions continue their title defence and remain in touch with the lead in the title race.
The battle for fourth came down to the Calsonic GT-R of Daiki Sasaki, and the #36 au TOM’s LC500 of Yuhi Sekiguchi. On the final lap, Sekiguchi tried a desperation pass on Sasaki into the Hitachi Chicane (Casio Triangle). The two gently touched wheels, and Sasaki drove away to take fourth place for he and Mardenborough, best of the Nissan GT-Rs. Sekiguchi and Kazuki Nakajima would finish 5th in the end.
Just behind them in sixth, despite starting 15th and last and being the only car suffocated by a fuel flow restrictor during the race, the #23 Motul Autech NISMO GT-R (Tsugio Matsuda/Ronnie Quintarelli) drove brilliantly to charge their way through the field and pick up a vital points-scoring finish. While they no longer hold the lead in the championship, they’re now just 1 point behind Yamamoto & Button in second position – all thanks to the superb driving from Matsuda and Quintarelli, the latter of whom celebrated his 100th race with a flourish.
Completing the top 10 finishers were the #3 CraftSports Motul GT-R (Satoshi Motoyama/Katsumasa Chiyo) in seventh, holding off the #38 ZENT Cerumo LC500 (Yuji Tachikawa/Hiroaki Ishiura) in eighth, the #24 Forum Engineering Advan GT-R (João Paulo de Oliveira/Mitsunori Takaboshi) in ninth, and the #64 Epson Modulo NSX-GT (Bertrand Baguette/Kosuke Matsuura), which scored their first point of the year in tenth.
Late drive-through penalties for avoidable contact relegated the #17 Keihin NSX-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi/Takashi Kogure) and the #6 Wako’s 4CR LC500 (Kazuya Oshima/James Rossiter) out of the points in the back half of the race.
While the GT500 race was compelling enough, it was the battle for the GT300 win which stole the show at Suzuka, ultimately taken by the #96 K-Tunes Racing Lexus RC F GT3 of Morio Nitta and Yuichi Nakayama, which also won from pole position.
Just as Izawa did in the GT500 class, the ageless champion Nitta quickly opened up a 10-second lead over the field after ten laps at the front. But that lead was also erased by the Safety Car intervention early in the race.
When the race resumed on their 17th lap, several GT300 front-runners took the chance to dive into the pit lane. Among them were the #25 Hoppy 86 MC (Takamitsu Matsui/Sho Tsuboi) and the #18 UPGarage 86 MC (Yuhki Nakayama/Takashi Kobayashi), both of which did not change tyres on their pit stop. It was a gamble, given the punishing nature of Suzuka’s fast corners on the tyres, but they’d gain tons of track position, and the lighter Mother Chassis cars were very gentle on their tyres to start the race.
Nitta pitted on Lap 24 to yield the car to Yuichi Nakayama, fresh off his class win at the Nürburgring 24 Hours. They took fuel and four new Bridgestone tyres on their stop. That cycled the #0 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Tatsuya Kataoka to the lead, and they stayed out until Lap 31. Kataoka yielded to Nobuteru Taniguchi, and critically, Goodsmile Racing & Team UKYO did not change tyres on their stop.
When Taniguchi came back out on track, he was ahead of Kobayashi in the UPGarage 86 for the lead of the race, and this sparked an incredible defensive drive from Taniguchi as he fended off Kobayashi at every chance for several laps. Within that time frame, Nakayama, now on four fresh tyres, had caught the leading duo, turning it into a three-way fight for the lead.
Not long after, the #61 Subaru BRZ R&D Sport of Takuto Iguchi found themselves in the fray, and so too did the Hoppy 86 of Tsuboi, making it a five-car battle for the lead of the race. Taniguchi was still doing everything that he could to fend off all the challengers behind him on worn tyres, as the pursuers behind him also battled for positions inside the top 5.
But on Lap 36, Nakayama finally made the move past Taniguchi into the Hitachi Chicane, and with four fresh tyres on his K-Tunes RC F, he left the train of cars on used rubber behind in this vapour trail. Taniguchi would spend several laps trying to defend second, but by then the Miku AMG’s pace was plummeting, and soon, the car itself plummeted down from second to a final result of 8th place by the end of the race as the tyre gamble did not pay off.
Nakayama drove away and won the race for he and Nitta by over 15 seconds at the end, giving the K-Tunes RC F its first win of the season, and the first from pole for the Lexus RC F GT3.
And for Nitta, his 19th career victory – his first since the 2013 Fuji 500km – brings him back to a share of the all-time GT300 career wins lead, which he now shares with Shinichi Takagi, who took the record two weeks ago at Fuji. This is also Nitta’s first Super GT win at Suzuka since 2000, at the season-ending 300km race.
“I am very happy we got the win,” said Nitta. In the last round Shinichi moved ahead of me in the record for most GT300 class wins, and I never expected that I would be able to draw even with him again this quickly. After I turned over the wheel to Yuichi for the second stint, I watched the whole rest of the race on the monitor screen and the pit was full of excitement.”
Nakayama added: “When the Safety Car came out during Nitta-san’s stint I thought, ‘Why does this have to happen to us at a time like this?’ But today our car’s performance was wonderful and we were able to come from behind to take the win.”
“I think the reason we won today was the fact that we were able to go through the 130R curve consistently at such a high speed. I am grateful to the Lexus engineers for giving us such a great car.”
Out of the chaos that was the incredible battle for 2nd in GT300, Tsuboi brought the Hoppy 86 MC home to a second place finish, putting he and Matsui right back in the thick of the title fight for Tsuchiya Engineering after a DNF at Fuji. For that drive, they earned a ¥500,000 bonus from broadcaster J Sports for Best Performance of the race.
They also drew level with Takagi and Sean Walkinshaw, who finished a miserable 20th in the #55 ARTA BMW M6 GT3, for the lead in the GT300 championship with 26 points a piece (though Takagi & Walkinshaw hold the tiebreaker with their win at Fuji.)
Iguchi and co-driver Hideki Yamauchi also got their own redemption after Fuji, coming home in third place for the Subaru BRZ’s first podium of the season. Behind them, the #88 ManePa Lamborghini Huracán GT3 (Kazuki Hiramine/Marco Mapelli) quietly charged from 14th on the grid to finish fourth, and the second LM Corsa-run Lexus, the #60 Syntium RC F GT3 (Hiroki Yoshimoto/Ritomo Miyata), finished fifth.
The no-tyre exchange didn’t pay off for Yuhki Nakayama and Takashi Kobayashi, who came home sixth in the UPGarage 86. The #65 LEON Cvstos AMG (Haruki Kurosawa/Naoya Gamou) was seventh, ahead of the languishing Miku AMG of Taniguchi & Kataoka in eighth. Completing the top 10 scorers were the #31 Toyota Prius apr GT (Koki Saga/Kohei Hirate), which came back from 21st on the grid to finish ninth, and the #10 Gainer TanaX triple a Nissan GT-R (Kazuki Hoshino/Hiroki Yoshida) finished tenth.
The likes of Button, Nakajima, Kamui Kobayashi, and Sven Müller will all be at Le Mans over the extended spring break on the calendar, and the 2018 Autobacs Super GT Series will resume on 30 June & 1 July at the Kingdom of Thailand at Chang International Circuit in Buriram, for the first leg of the traditional “Summer Series.”
Images courtesy of ARTA Project and the GT Association
