Wet weather conditions and unpredictable rainfall contributed to a major shock in qualifying for the Sugo Super Taikyu 3 Hours Race today. The grid for tomorrow’s Group 1 race, which was expected to have the GT3 cars from the ST-X class starting up front, will instead be led by the #500 Team 5Zigen Mercedes-AMG GT4 out of the ST-Z class.
The 5Zigen AMG GT4 of Ryuichiro Otsuka, Kakunoshin Ota, and Toshihiro Kaneishi inherited the pole position for the second of Sunday’s three-hour races, following a post-qualifying penalty for the #3 Endless AMG GT4 (Ryo Ogawa/Shintaro Kawabata/Riki Tanioka) which had set the fastest aggregate time across the “A” and “B” segments.
Competing in the ST-Q class as a means to test their own brake technologies outside of GT4 homologation, the Endless AMG GT4 took provisional pole with pro drivers Ogawa and Kawabata setting a combined time of 2’55.978, ahead of the 2’59.012 set by the pro/am lineup of Otsuka and Ota in the 5Zigen AMG GT4. Times set during the subsequent “C” and “D” driver segments do not impact the grid order, but a penalty assessed to Tanioka for cutting across the pit entrance line resulted in a two-place grid penalty for the Endless AMG GT4.
It’s the third straight ST-Z class pole position for Team 5Zigen, who lead the class championship standings after their win at the Fuji Super TEC 24 Hours.
They’ll line up alongside the #885 SHADE Racing Toyota GR Supra GT4 (Hiro Hayashi/Katsuyuki Hiranaka/Eijiro Shimizu) in second position, followed by the Endless AMG GT4 dropping to third, followed by the #310 GR Garage Mito Inter Supra GT4 (Manabu Yamazaki/Sho Tsuboi/Seita Nonaka/Shinya Hosokawa) in fourth.
And the reason why all but one of the GT4 cars out-qualified the GT3 machines during this wet qualifying was that, with the ST-X and ST-Z classes qualifying in separate sessions, the rain intensified just as the ST-X cars took to the track for their respective 15-minute qualifying runs.
The top qualifier in ST-X was the #16 Porsche Center Okazaki 911 GT3-R of Hiroaki Nagai, Yuta Kamimura, and Daisuke Ito – ninth overall and over two seconds ahead of the next ST-X car. It’s the second pole of the year for the bright red Porsche, which has also won the last two races at Sugo dating back to 2020.
Second in ST-X was the #888 Grid Motorsport Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Martin Berry/Shinichi Takagi/Haruki Kurosawa/Daisuke Yamawaki), followed by the #23 TKRI AMG GT3 (Daisuke Matsunaga/Yuya Motojima/Yuhki Nakayama) in third.
The rainfall also caught out the ST-1 class cars, where the #38 muta Racing GR Supra (Yuui Tsutsumi/Yuichi Nakayama/Kota Matsui) won pole position in its class, their first of the season. However, they’ll start 18th out of 20 cars in the Group 1 grid.
The start of the Group 1 race, scheduled for 14:00 JST (6:00 BST / 7:00 CEST / 1:00 EDT), should be fascinating with the faster GT3 cars starting in the middle of the pack, behind the GT4 cars.
Pole position in the Group 2 race went to the #311 Team Fukushima Nissan Fairlady Z34 of Yusuke Shiotsu, Tsugio Matsuda, Ai Miura, and Kazuki Hiramine. It’s the first ST-3 class pole position for the first-year team.
It was a close fight for pole position with the top three cars in ST-3 separated by just three-tenths of a second on aggregate. The championship-leading #52 Saitama Toyopet GreenBrave Toyota Crown RS (Naoki Hattori/Hiroki Yoshida/Kohta Kawaai) was second, and the #25 raffinée/Nissan Mechanic Challenge Z34 (Teppei Natori/Ryuichiro Tomita/Takuya Shirasaka) was third.
Starting seventh out of the 29 cars in the Group 2 field is the ST-Q class #61 Team SDA Engineering Subaru BRZ CNF Concept (Takuto Iguchi/Hideki Yamauchi/Koichi Hirota), with the #32 ORC ROOKIE Racing Toyota GR Corolla H2 Concept (Masahiro Sasaki/Akio “Morizo” Toyoda/Yasuhiro Ogura) in 13th, and the #55 Mazda Spirit Racing Mazda2 Bio Concept (Kazuhiro Terakawa/Kaoru Ijiri/Yutaka Seki/Ikuo Maeda) in 21st.
ST-4 pole position went to the #86 TOM’s Spirit Toyota GR86 (Shunsuke Kohno/Takamitsu Matsui/Kenta Yamashita), ahead of the new #884 SHADE Racing GR86 (Keishi Ishikawa/Yuji Kunimoto/Shinnosuke Yamada).
The #72 Öhlins/NATS Mazda Roadster (Tetsuya Yamano/Makoto Kanai/Toshiya Nojima) took ST-5 class pole position for the second time in three races, ahead of the #104 HM Racers Mazda2 (Soichiro Yoshida/Kota Sasaki/Tomomitsu Seno) and the #65 odula/Tone/HERO’s Roadster (Shuichiro Hokazono/Hiroki Wako/Hirohito Ito/Tatsuya Ota).
The Group 2 race will begin at 8:45 JST (24:45 BST / 1:45 CEST / Saturday 19:45 EDT).
Feature image © Team 5Zigen
