As the chequered flag fell on the final qualifying session of the 2019 Autobacs Super GT Series championship, Yuhi Sekiguchi snatched pole position with his final flying lap to put himself, his two-time 24 Hours of Le Mans-winning teammate Kazuki Nakajima, and the number 36 au TOM’s Lexus LC500 on pole position for tomorrow’s Motegi GT 250km Race.
It was a lap that crushed the longshot championship dreams of the NISMO number 23 Motul Autech GT-R of Tsugio Matsuda and Ronnie Quintarelli, who needed to qualify on pole position and win the race at minimum to overcome a 20.5 point deficit in the GT500 Championship standings. Matsuda was fastest in Q1, and despite a big lockup into the first corner, Quintarelli got it all back in the last three sectors as his time of 1’36.128 looked good enough to secure the pole position the “Red Car” needed to fight for the title tomorrow.
But Sekiguchi’s first sector split made the difference, and he remained within milliseconds of Quintarelli’s best times throughout the lap, and took pole position with a lap of 1’35.964 – his third career GT500 pole position, and his second of the year since May at Suzuka Circuit, where he and Nakajima went on to win the race from pole.
Sekiguchi said after the qualifying session: “Since our main aim is to make a good showing and demonstrate our strength in the final round, I wasn’t thinking about the contenders for the season title.”
“There was a slight oversteering tendency when Nakajima drove in Q1, so the two of us drivers got together with the engineers and manager and talked about it, and as a result, we were able to get a very good machine set-up, which made it very easy for me to drive. This is my second season teamed with Nakajima-san, and I think that this result shows the progress we have made as a team, so I am very happy about this.”
On his final flying lap, Kenta Yamashita – the new protegé of the Toyota Gazoo Racing WEC operation, secured a front row start for the #6 Wako’s 4CR LC500 (and an all-Lexus front-row lockout) with his final flying lap, a 1’35.999, just 0.035 seconds off of a pole position and a bonus point that could have boosted their points lead over the #37 KeePer TOM’s LC500 of Ryo Hirakawa and Nick Cassidy.
But the lap was still sufficient to get Oshima & Yamashita ahead of Hirakawa & Cassidy on the grid for Sunday’s 53-lap race, which prompted a fist-pumping, cheering celebration from team director Juichi Wakisaka on the pit wall as Lexus Team LeMans Wako’s took one small step towards securing the GT500 Championships tomorrow. If they hold position and at least finish where they qualified, the blue and pink number 6 will win the title tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the KeePer TOM’s LC500 of Hirakawa & Cassidy – the latter in contention to become only the fifth driver to win Japan’s “Double Championship” with titles in Super Formula and GT500 – will need to at least finish where they qualified in fourth and have the Wako’s LC500 finish a few spots behind them – to take the title. A win for the number 37 requires a third-place finish or lower for the number 6, for instance.
The Wako’s LC500 and KeePer LC500 ended up sandwiching the Motul GT-R on the grid as Matsuda & Quintarelli will end up starting third.
Jenson Button’s final GT500 qualifying run didn’t end as he’d hoped: He and his outgoing 2018 champion teammate Naoki Yamamoto were eliminated after Q1 as Button went 11th-fastest in the #1 Raybrig Honda NSX-GT.
Three of the five NSX-GTs did end up progressing to Q2, led by the #17 Keihin NSX-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi/Bertrand Baguette) which will start fifth tomorrow. Sixth on the grid is the #38 ZENT Cerumo LC500 (Yuji Tachikawa/Hiroaki Ishiura), while the fourth row is made up of the #64 Modulo Epson NSX-GT (Narain Karthikeyan/Tadasuke Makino) and the #8 ARTA NSX-GT (Tomoki Nojiri/Takuya Izawa) – the latter of which came to a premature stop in Q2 before its final flying lap.
Speaking of mechanical troubles, the #12 Calsonic Impul GT-R (Daiki Sasaki/James Rossiter) will start last after an engine issue discovered after Saturday morning’s practice session kept them from even taking part.
In the GT300 class, Spanish rookie Álex Palou set a new course record and gave the #720 McLaren Customer Racing Japan 720S GT3 its first-ever pole position in the final race of what had been a difficult season for Palou and veteran co-driver Seiji Ara. Palou’s best lap of 1’45.907 eclipsed the previous GT300 course record at Motegi by just 0.004 seconds over Kazuki Hiramine’s 2018 pole lap.
It’s a milestone pole position for McLaren, their first since September 2002 when Hitotsuyama Racing’s longtail F1 GTR qualified on GT500 class pole position at this very circuit. It’s the first GT300 pole position for McLaren and the first for a Kazumichi Goh-run McLaren team since October 1996 at Central Park Miné Circuit.
“I am extremely happy,” exclaimed Palou, who led the Super Formula Championship with three pole positions in his rookie year. “We had a new project this season, and we went through many difficulties as a new team. So I had my mind set on winning pole position in the last round. I really want to express my appreciation to the team and my partner Ara-san.”
Meanwhile, the #55 ARTA Honda NSX GT3 of Shinichi Takagi and Nirei Fukuzumi took a massive step towards the GT300 Championship title after high drama in Q1 involving the #96 K-Tunes Racing Lexus RC F GT3 of Morio Nitta and Sena Sakaguchi.
Three-time GT500 champion Nitta spun at the final corner on his Q1 hot lap, clipping just too much of the inner curb at Victory Corner to unsettle the white and black Lexus and nearly cause a collision as he was sent spinning in front of traffic. Nitta was able to improve and set a fast lap, but his fastest wasn’t enough to make the top 16 and advance into Q2, missing the cut by 0.046 seconds.
Eventually, Nitta and Sakaguchi would fall to a 19th place starting position, while Takagi and Fukuzumi had no dramas in qualifying – Takagi just made it in on his Q1 run, and Fukuzumi qualified fifth in Q2, to the delight of the Honda faithful at Motegi. All the black and orange ARTA NSX GT3 needs to win the championship is a top-four finish tomorrow. The K-Tunes RC F, on the other hand, needs help just to get from the middle rows to finish first or second to have any shot at the title, depending on the result of the ARTA NSX.
The championship dreams of the #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Tatsuya Kataoka), and the #56 Realize Nissan Mechanic Challenge GT-R GT3 (Kazuki Hiramine/Sacha Fenestraz) came to an end after neither team could secure the bonus point they needed to have any shot at the title. Hiramine just missed pole by 0.126 seconds and qualified 2nd, while Kataoka put the Miku AMG 7th on the grid.
The back-to-back Motegi winners’ #65 LEON Pyramid AMG (Naoya Gamou/Togo Suganami) qualified third, ahead of the #11 Gainer TanaX GT-R (Katsuyuki Hiranaka/Hironobu Yasuda) in fourth – while the ARTA NSX GT3 will share row three with the #33 EVA Racing X Works GT-R (Shaun Thong/Shinya Sean Michimi) starting sixth. The best of the non-GT3 runners was the #25 Hoppy Toyota 86 MC (Takamitsu Matsui/Kimiya Sato), which starts 10th, hoping to lead the JAF-GT300/Mother Chassis contingent’s plans of thwarting a GT3 clean sweep of the 2019 season.
Tomorrow’s 53-lap championship Grand Final goes green at 1:30 PM JST (local time), 4:30 AM GMT.
Photos by Pierre-Laurent Ribault
