Provisional 61 Car Entry List for 2022 Super Taikyu Series Powered by Hankook

The Super Taikyu Organisation (STO) has released the first provisional entry list for the upcoming 2022 Super Taikyu Series Powered by Hankook, which is at a provisional count of 61 cars across nine classes of competition.

Headlining the field will be an eight-car GT3 grid in the premier ST-X category. This includes reigning champions D’station Racing, whose Aston Martin AMR Vantage GT3 will run most of the season – with the exception of dates which clash with their priority commitments in the World Endurance Championship.

Four other ST-X teams return from last season: MP Racing and GTNET Motor Sports with their Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3s, Porsche Center Okazaki with their 911 GT3-R, and apr with their Lexus RC F GT3. They will be joined by three new entries into the class this year: The Mercedes-AMG GT3 of TKRI and the Nissan GT-R of HELM Motorsports, who are moving up from lower categories, as well as newcomers Grid Motorsport, with their Mercedes-AMG GT3.

Drivers have already been announced for most of these programmes, and more announcements have come since our last news notebook. Porsche Center Okazaki will have Hiroaki Nagai, Yuta Kamimura, and former Super GT GT500 champion Daisuke Ito as their lineup. apr will be at the pre-season test at Fuji next week, and are expected to confirm an unchanged lineup of Hideki Nagai, Koki Saga, and Kazuto Kotaka for the full season. HELM Motorsports have all but confirmed Yutaka Toriba as their am driver for the 2022 season.

Ten GT4 cars are on the provisional entry list for the ST-Z class. Returning from 2021 are three Toyota GR Supra GT4s, from Hiroshima Toyopet Racing, CSI (Corolla Shin-Ibaraki) Racing, and SHADE Racing. CSI Racing recently announced reigning GT500 champion Sho Tsuboi as part of a driver lineup that also features Manabu Yamazaki, Shinya Hosokawa, and reigning FIA F4 Japanese Champion Seita Nonaka.

Team 5Zigen return with their Mercedes-AMG GT4, and Birth Racing Project’s Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 MR Clubsport will run the full season after a one-off entry in 2021.

Audi Team Hitotsuyama, who confirmed over the winter their exit from the Super GT Series, will field an Audi R8 LMS GT4 in the ST-Z class. They’ll be joined by returning Audi Team AS Sport.

The number 22 team that competed as Porsche Team EBI Waimarama will be back with an unchanged lineup of drivers, based on the entry list for testing. But the entry name and vehicle have yet to be determined. Techno First Racing Team will return with a vehicle to be confirmed. There is also an additional entry that will be announced later.

However, three-time and rreigning ST-Z champions Endless Sports have moved out of the category and into the ST-1 class, fielding a Mercedes-AMG GT. Likewise, D’station Racing have already announced that their number 47 will move into the ST-1 class with the new Aston Martin Vantage GT8R.

These new ST-1 cars will join the reigning ST-1 champion KTM X-Bow GTX from K’s Frontier KTM Cars, and the muta Racing/Tracy Sports Toyota GR Supra.

The ST-Q class, a non-competitive category for special racing vehicles, will have a total of five entries this year. The four entries that are already confirmed will focus solely on developing solutions for sustainable mobility.

ORC ROOKIE Racing will enter the returning #32 Toyota Corolla Sport H2 Concept, as well as their new #28 Toyota GR86 CNF (carbon-neutral fuel) Concept. Team SDA Engineering will enter the #61 Subaru BRZ CNF Concept. And Mazda Spirit Racing will enter the #55 Mazda2 Bio Concept, which is powered by a diesel engine running on biofuel. A fifth entry in the category will be announced later.

Drivers from the world of eSports will be represented among the lower categories. Yusuke Tomibayashi and Toshiya Nogami, both of whom raced for D’station Racing in the Virtual Le Mans Series, will be racing for real in 2022: Tomibayashi returns to the #39 Delta with Tracy Sports Lexus RC 350, aiming to win his third consecutive ST-3 title. Nogami, last year’s Roadster Party Race North regional champion, will make his series debut in the Ohlins-sponsored #72 Mazda Roadster from iCraft and Nihon Automobile College (ST-5). Mamoru Okada joins reigning ST-2 champions Shinryo Racing Team and their #7 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X.

And top GT500 drivers such as Tsugio Matsuda (FKS Team Fukushima, ST-3), Kenta Yamashita (TOM’s Spirit, ST-4), and Yuji Kunimoto (SHADE Racing, ST-4) will also be represented in the production classes, with more announcements still to come.

Entry list current as of 16 February 2022.