It had taken nearly three calendar years, but at long last the apr Lexus Racing crew and the #31 Denso Lexus RC F GT3 of Hiroaki Nagai, Kazuto Kotaka, and Koki Saga won in the Super Taikyu Series for the first time. Nagai, Kotaka, and Saga won the Motegi Super Taikyu 5 Hours Race from pole position and leapt back into the forefront of a tight battle for the ST-X Class Championship.
Sunday, 3 September, was a beautiful, warm day for a five-hour endurance race with ambient temperatures in excess of 30°C. 45 cars in eight classes entered the race including six contenders in the premier ST-X class.
Nagai, just two weeks removed from winning the GT World Challenge Asia Japan Cup title, won the pole with Toyota young factory driver Kotaka on Saturday, then had the honour of starting the race aboard the black and white #31 Lexus. Nagai drove out to an early lead over the #1 HELM Motorsports Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 of Yutaka Toriba, another gentleman driver, who had a trio of fast pros behind him in Hibiki Taira, Yuya Motojima, and Ho-Pin Tung.
The #23 TKRI Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Motojima quickly took second place and began chasing down Nagai for the lead. After 38 minutes of racing, Motojima took the lead with a pass up the inside of the downhill 90-degree Corner (turn 11). Tung would quickly follow and the #202 KCMG Honda NSX GT3 was running second at Honda-owned Mobility Resort Motegi.
Toriba, meanwhile, had slipped to fourth but at the end of the first hour, he collided with a backmarker and spun off at the S Curves at turn eight to bring out the first Full Course Yellow (FCY) of the race. While he was able to drive out of the gravel, Toriba and the #1 HELM GT-R lost significant ground early on after a subsequent drive-through penalty for causing a collision.
Once all the ST-X runners made their first pit stops, the #23 TKRI Mercedes was still out in front after a change of drivers from Motojima to Yuhki Nakayama – while Kotaka now ran second after taking over the #31 apr Lexus for his first stint.
The lead would change hands again just past the halfway point in the race when TKRI’s gentleman driver Daisuke Matsunaga took over for his compulsory 75-minute stint. Daisuke had a decent lead over Koki Saga in the #31 apr Lexus, but Saga would eventually find his way past at the S Curves to take the lead and never look back. It was a great boost of confidence for a veteran driver who had recently come under fire for his ‘old-fashioned’ driving style in the prior week.
Kotaka took over for his second and final stint and comfortably rode to the chequered flag, and at long last, apr could celebrate its first win in the Eneos Super Taikyu Series’ top category. The trio of Nagai, Kotaka, and Saga completed 147 laps and won by 48.341 seconds. It was a total team effort.
TKRI’s streak of consecutive podiums continued as Daisuke, Motojima, and Nakayama came home in second place after leading early on, positioning them well for a run at the ST-X title with two races remaining.
GTNET Motor Sports’ #81 Daishin GT-R GT3 (Noboyuki Oyagi/Natsu Sakaguchi/Takayuki Aoki/Kiyoto Fujinami) struggled early on and fell off the lead lap. But once Oyagi’s opening stint was finished, a combination of quick driving from Sakaguchi, Aoki, and Fujinami plus good strategy propelled the bright orange Daishin GT-R to third place, GTNET Motor Sports’ best result since the mid-season reorganisation.
Toriba, Yuya Hiraki, and Reiji Hiraki recovered to finish fourth in the #1 HELM GT-R. As for the #202 KCMG NSX (Paul Ip/Ho-Pin Tung/Marchy Lee), they dropped out of contention after a drive-through penalty for a pitwork infringement and finished fifth overall.
But there was high drama in the race for the championship with 75 minutes remaining as the #14 Zhongsheng ROOKIE Racing Mercedes (Ryuta Ukai/Naoya Gamou/Hibiki Taira/Tatsuya Kataoka) went into the garage. Gamou reported an issue with the pedal box, and as the team was trying to fix that issue, the driver-side door broke. This calamity cost ROOKIE Racing eight laps – they’d finish 12th overall and last in class.
Zhongsheng ROOKIE Racing still leads the ST-X standings with two races left, but the gap to second-place HELM Motorsports has been trimmed to just seven and a half points. The big gainer is apr, who’ve leapt from sixth to third in the table and are now just 15 points out of first place, with TKRI in fourth place and 19 points back. All six full-time teams are still within 29 points of first place, setting up both an intriguing penultimate three-hour round at Okayama in October, and a gripping finale at Fuji in November.
The ST-1 class returned to action after being rotated back in following Autopolis. For the second straight race, the #2 K’s Frontier KTM Cars X-Bow GTX (Taiyo Ida/Hiroki Katoh/Kazuho Takahashi/Hiroki Yoshimoto) won from pole position, finishing sixth overall and completing 140 laps. It was the KTM’s third win in a row, giving it a 19-point championship lead.
Finishing in seventh overall was the #47 D’station Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT8R (Tatsuya Hoshino/Manabu Orido/Kenji Hama/Jake Parsons).
Motegi welcomed the return of the #230 NISMO Nissan Z Racing Concept, the GT4-based prototype running on carbon-neutral synthetic fuel. For its first race since the Fuji 24 Hours, the #230 NISMO Z also had updated bodywork resembling that of the new Nissan Fairlady Z NISMO Edition.
Unsurprisingly it was the highest-ranked ST-Q class car in the race as factory drivers Daiki Sasaki, Kohei Hirate, and Mitsunori Takaboshi drove on to an eighth-place overall finish, completing 138 laps – and finishing ahead of all the homologated GT4 cars in the ST-Z class. The #230 NISMO Z is expected to take part in the remaining races this year.
As for the ST-Z class, Toyota’s reign continued with a fifth straight victory for the GR Supra GT4. But in a crucial battle for the championship, the #885 SHADE Racing GR Supra (Hiro Hayashi/Katsuyuki Hiranaka/Eijiro Shimizu) held off the charge of the #52 Saitama Toyopet GreenBrave GR Supra (Manabu Yamazaki/Hiroki Yoshida/Naoki Hattori/Kohta Kawaai) to win the class by just seven-tenths of a second. It was the second straight win for the trio of Hayashi, Hiranaka, and Shimizu.
And what a win it was in terms of the championship table: SHADE Racing has now closed to within 37 points of Saitama Toyopet GreenBrave with just two races remaining – plus, each team’s lowest-scoring round will be dropped for the final championship standings. Both cars rounded out the overall top ten.
Third in ST-Z was the #26 Team ZeroOne Nissan Z GT4 (Ryuichiro Otsuka/Ryuichiro Tomita/Teppei Natori/Takuro Shinohara), 34 seconds back of the lead fight. The #34 Techno First Audi R8 LMS GT4 (Masaki Kano/Riki Okusa/Hironobu Yasuda) was fourth, followed by the #20 Naniwa Densou Team Impul Z (Yuki Tanaka/Kazuki Oki/Keishi Ishikawa). Ishikawa was named as a last-minute substitute for Kazuki Hiramine, who had to miss the race due to illness.
In sixth was the #21 Hitotsuyama Audi R8 (Daisuke Yamawaki/Sean Walkinshaw/Ritomo Miyata/Yuki Ano); this was the first appearance for Miyata in S-Tai this season, and one week later, he would make his FIA World Endurance Championship debut at Fuji.
An early accident knocked the #75 Team Noah GR Supra (Kuniyuki Haga/Yoshikazu Sobu/Tatsuya Okahara/Yuji Kiyotaki) out of the race for over three hours, and after finally getting back on track, the car stopped with ten minutes remaining.
Then, with just over an hour left in the race, the #22 Porsche Team EBI Waimarama Cayman GT4 RS (Shota Kitazono/Katsumasa Chiyo/Naoya Yamano) caught fire after its final pit stop. Yamano pulled over at the side of turn two and an FCY was shown. Porsche Team EBI Waimarama plans to repair the damaged Cayman GT4 RS Clubsport if possible and finish the rest of the season, but it was a cruel end to the race after Chiyo led early on.
ST-TCR was won, uncontested, by the #97 M&K Racing Honda Civic Type R TCR of Mitsuhiro Endo, F1 veteran Shinji Nakano, and young Honda scholarship driver Tosei Moriyama. They finished 21st overall after coming to a stop at the entrance of pit lane (which created an unnecessary hazard – a course truck was brought out to get the car going again, blocking the narrow entrance into pit lane for other cars). Otherwise, they had a clean race.
Any challenge was lost less than 20 minutes into the race after a collision took out the #5 AI’ Racing Civic FK7 (Kazuhiro Sakai/Masaaki Fujii/Shion Tsujimoto/Ren Sato). Sato and Tsujimoto never got the chance to drive.
There was a dramatic finish in the ST-3 class, where the #25 Team ZeroOne Nissan Fairlady Z34 of Tomohide Yamaguchi, Tsugio Matsuda, Kimiya Sato and Daiki Fujiwara won after being spun out by the #15 Okabe Jidosha Z34 (Masaya Kono/Masaaki Nagashima/Aruga Tomita/Seiya Motojima) with two laps to go.
Fujiwara and Kono had been battling for the lead throughout the last hour of the race. With three minutes left, Kono went for a lunge at the S Curves to get around Fujiwara, but the door quickly closed and Kono spun Fujiwara out. Kono would take the chequered flag first on the road, but the incident was reviewed and the #15 Okabe Jidosha Z34 was given a 30-second time penalty for causing a collision.
Team ZeroOne, who had finished last in ST-3 in every race prior to Motegi, had finally gotten its first win in Super Taikyu. It was a great sight to see Matsuda on the top step of the podium, in his first Super Taikyu race since the Fuji 24 Hours. And there were no lingering feelings of ill will after the race as the two Okabe Jidosha cars rounded out the podium, with the #15 ahead of the #16 (Hirokazu Suzuki/Toru Tanaka/Tetsuya Tanaka/Kazuomi Komatsu).
Tracy Sports with Delta’s #38 Lexus RC 350 still leads the championship but with two races remaining, the top four teams – both Tracy Sports/Delta cars and both Okabe Jidosha cars – are covered by just 13.5 points. Even Team ZeroOne still has an outside chance at the title.
In ST-2, Kobe Toyopet Motor Sports’ run of terrible luck has finally come to an end. The #225 KTMS Toyota GR Yaris of Kengo Ichijo, Rin Arakawa, Jiei Okuzumi, and Shunji Okumoto finally captured its first win of 2023. They won the class by a full lap over the #7 Shinryo Racing Team Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X (Yoshiki Fujii/Kensuke Anzai/Kazuya Shimogaki/Kazunari Yoshioka).
Endless Sports has virtually sewn up the ST-2 title with a third-place finish for the #13 GR Yaris of Masaya Hanazato, Mizuki Ishizaka, Reimei Ito, and Hitoshi Okada. Since ST-2 won’t take part in the Okayama race, a 27.5-point championship lead ensures that all they’d need to do at the final race at Fuji is finish the race in order to clinch the ST-2 Class Championship.
And in ST-4, the #41 Tracy Sports with Delta Toyota GR86 of Dai Mizuno, Yusuke Tomibayashi, and Hirotaka Ishii took its first win of the 2023 season, and closed to within one-and-a-half points of the ST-4 Class Championship lead.
They won by 41.7 seconds over the #86 TOM’s Spirit GR86 (Hisashi Yabuki/Takamitsu Matsui/Shunsuke Kohno/Sho Tsuboi), which had taken the lead until Yabuki spun off into the gravel at turn five with less than 90 minutes to go. Kohno would cap off a recovery drive to take second over the #884 SHADE Racing GR86 (Masahiko Kageyama/Yuji Kunimoto/Shinnosuke Yamada/Teppei Tsuruta) which finally got its first podium of the year in third.
Another car that made its debut this weekend was the #32 ROOKIE Racing Toyota GR Yaris DAT Concept. This car features a prototype eight-speed direct automatic transmission tuned for sports and racing, one that Toyota hopes to introduce into production vehicles in the near future.
Toyota Chairman of the Board Akio “Morizo” Toyoda and co-drivers Masahiro Sasaki, Hiroaki Ishiura, and Yasuhiro Ogura drove a fault-free race in the DAT Yaris and finished 26th overall, only a lap behind the ST-2-winning #225 KTMS GR Yaris with its H-pattern manual gearbox.
The Eneos Super Taikyu Series Supported by Bridgestone returns to action on 22 October for a double-header round at Okayama International Circuit, comprised of two three-hour races.
Images © Super Taikyu Organisation (STO)
