Ahead of this Saturday’s Fuji GT 3 Hours Race, the Autobacs SUPER GT Series has announced a small change to the series’ new qualifying format.
The 107% minimum time requirement has been dropped from Q1 and will only apply to Q2. Teams are now simply required to record a time in Q1, and then set a time within 107% of the average of the three fastest cars in Q2, to be able to qualify for the race.
At Okayama, the #8 ARTA Mugen Honda Civic Type R-GT of Tomoki Nojiri and Nobuharu Matsushita had its fastest lap in Q1 taken away after Matsushita ran wide out of the final corner and exceeded track limits.
Matsushita’s second-fastest lap did not meet the 107% minimum threshold, so the #8 ARTA Civic was required to start the race from pit lane.
During the race, Nojiri had to wait until both GT500 and GT300 classes started the race to leave the pits, which put Nojiri over half a lap behind the GT500 leaders.
An early Safety Car intervention allowed him to catch up to the field. Nojiri and Matsushita finished eighth.
Under the revised system, Nojiri and Matsushita would have started at the back of the GT500 grid instead.
Teams that fail to set a representative time in both sessions will still be required to start from the pits, along with any team that elects to change more than one tyre between qualifying and the race. However, the 107% rule does not apply in Q2 if the session is declared wet.
Last week, SUPER GT also announced the “special conditions” for this weekend’s race at Fuji Speedway.
All teams must make at least two mandatory green flag pit stops for refuelling during the race to satisfy the sporting regulations, during a designated window between the start of the fifth lap and the end of the penultimate lap.
Driver and tyre changes are not required for each mandatory pit stop.
Teams will be allowed to bring six sets of dry tyres and seven sets of wet tyres – two more sets of each than at the 300-kilometre race at Okayama.
For the GT300 teams that registered a third driver, that driver must drive at least 50 kilometres (11 laps) during the race to be eligible for Drivers’ Championship points.
That rule also remains unchanged from previous years, along with the maximum drive time of two-thirds’ of the scheduled race distance – which is a tidy two hours!
Qualifying starts Friday at 14:25 JST (local time) / 6:25 BST (DSC time) – and the green flag for the annual Fuji Golden Week race is on Saturday at 13:30 JST / 5:30 BST.
Feature image © GTA
