In only the team’s second Eneos Super Taikyu Series start, Craft-Bamboo Racing won Sunday’s Super Taikyu Race in Autopolis after coming back from an early drive-through penalty.
Ironically, the #33 Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Jeffrey Lee, Kakunoshin Ohta, Dean Chen, and Liang Jiatong was declared the winner after the #81 Daishin GTNET Nissan GT-R GT3 was given a post-race penalty for an illegal push start.
Up to and after the final round of pit stops, the orange #81 GTNET Nissan was in control thanks to the quick driving of Kiyoto Fujinami, Natsu Sakaguchi, and new GT3 ‘A’ driver Nobuhiro Imada. The #23 TKRI Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Daisuke Matsunaga/Yuya Motojima/Yuhki Nakayama) took the lead on track after one hour and 45 minutes of the five-hour race, but with Matsunaga yet to drive approaching the final hour, it seemed inevitable that a move would be made at the end.
Sure enough, with 42 minutes left, Fujinami in the #81 Nissan overtook Matsunaga for the lead, and would cruise on to take what appeared to be a comfortable win for GTNET MotorSports, by 55 seconds.
But the final pitstop with 80 minutes to go proved fateful. Just as Fujinami was ready to drive away to start his final stop, the starter motor on the #81 Nissan failed – and the team decided to push the car out of its stall, knowing that it was prohibited under the Super Taikyu Sporting Regulations and that a penalty would be given.
That penalty was a one-lap deduction that dropped the #81 Daishin GT-R from first to fourth place, off the overall podium.
That opened the door for the #33 Craft-Bamboo Mercedes, which received a drive-through penalty in the opening hour when Lee made contact with the #25 Team ZeroOne Nissan Z NISMO GT4, to come back and take the win. Ace driver Ohta’s pass on Matsunaga with 30 minutes remaining turned from a pass for second place into the race-winning overtake.
It’s the first overall and ST-X Class win for a team based outside of Japan since 2019 when another Hong Kong-based team, X Works, won at Motegi in 2019.
While the #23 TKRI Mercedes surrendered the lead in the final hour, the second-place finish for Matsunaga, Motojima, and Nakayama gave Tatsuya Kataoka’s team the lead in the ST-X Championship. TKRI now leads Zhongsheng ROOKIE Racing by five and a half points after ROOKIE Racing elected to sit out the Autopolis round.
However, ROOKIE Racing does have the benefit that only the six highest-scoring rounds out of seven count towards the final championship standings in ST-X.
The #31 apr Lexus RC F GT3 (Hiroaki Nagai/Kazuto Kotaka/Miki Koyama/Koki Saga) finished third overall, ahead of the #81 Daishin GT-R of Imada, Fujinami, Sakaguchi, and newcomer Taichi Watarai (who did not run in his first weekend as a GT3 driver).
Reigning ST-Z Champions, Saitama Green Brave, won for the second time in 2024 – but only after the #52 Toyota GR Supra GT4 EVO of Manabu Yamazaki, Hiroki Yoshida, Naoki Hattori, and Seita Nonaka escaped catastrophe early in the race.
At the end of the first hour, Yoshida was battling for second place with the #20 Naniwa Denso Team Impul Nissan of Kazuki Hiramine. As the two ran side-by-side into turn one, Hiramine drew ahead of Yoshida, but didn’t clear the #52 Toyota as he moved to the left. Yoshida clipped Hiramine in the right-rear and sent the #20 Nissan spearing off to the left, head-on into the guardrail. A Safety Car was deployed immediately.
Hiramine was able to walk away unassisted and was not seriously injured – he is expected to race this weekend in the SUPER GT Series Fuji 350km. With Hiramine’s health assured, there were still grim faces at Team Impul after the team’s Nissan Z NISMO GT4 suffered a second major accident in three races.
Yoshida, meanwhile, drove away from the contact and suffered no significant damage. For much of the race, the #26 Team ZeroOne Nissan (Ryuichiro Otsuka/Ryuichiro Tomita/Takuro Shinohara/Seiji Ara) led ST-Z ahead of the #52 Green Brave GR Supra. On the final round of pit stops, Green Brave opted to take fuel only on its final pit stop, allowing Nonaka to take the lead once he took over from Hattori to close out the race.
Nonaka took the chequered flag 32 seconds ahead of the #26 ZeroOne Nissan in second – for Saitama Green Brave’s sixth win in ten races since moving to the ST-Z class last year, and a fifth-place overall finish.
Meanwhile, at Team Noah’s home race, the #5 Mach Syaken GR Supra (Toshiro Tsukada/Yu Kanamaru/Kokoro Morita/Aruga Tomita) drove to an outstanding third-place finish in ST-Z. It’s the Fukuoka-based team’s first GT4 podium since moving up from ST-TCR last season.
The #21 Hitotsuyama Mercedes-AMG GT4 (Daisuke Yamawaki/Sean Walkinshaw/James Pull/Shintaro Kawabata) scored a season-best fourth-place finish in ST-Z, ahead of the #885 SHADE Racing GR Supra (Hiro Hayashi/Katsuyuki Hiranaka/Eijiro Shimizu). With these results, Saitama Green Brave stretches its lead in the ST-Z standings to 26 points over SHADE Racing.
For the first time, the ST-1 class #2 KTM X-Bow GTX (Taiyo Ida/Hiroki Katoh/Kazuho Takahashi/Hiroki Yoshimoto) enjoyed a trouble-free race on the way to a sixth-place overall finish, behind the ST-X and ST-Z winners.
The ST-Q class #92 GR Team Spirit GR Supra Racing Concept (Keizo Kato/Takamitsu Matsui/Shunsuke Kohno/Kenta Yamashita) also had a clean race and finished ninth overall, behind the top three homologated GT4 cars in ST-Z.
But for the other four ST-Q class entries, Autopolis was a painful race. The hydrogen-powered #32 ROOKIE Racing Toyota GR Corolla H2 Concept (Akio “Morizo” Toyoda/Masahiro Sasaki/Hiroaki Ishiura/Yasuhiro Ogura) retired after completing just 60 laps, losing several hours due to a faulty hydrogen pump power supply. This was Morizo’s first race as the Chairman of the Super Taikyu Mirai Organisation (STMO).
Electrical issues forced the #55 Mazda Spirit Racing Mazda3 Bio Concept (Kazuhiro Terakawa/Yutaka Seki/Kaoru Ijiri/Ikuo Maeda) to retire with just over 40 minutes left, spoiling a battle for position with the #28 ROOKIE Racing GR86 CNF Concept (Eisuke Sasaki/Sho Tsuboi/Kazuya Oshima/Daisuke Toyoda). The #28 GR86 CNF Concept lost power with 12 minutes to go, and it also retired from the race.
That left only the debuting #61 Team SDA Engineering Subaru High Performance X Future Concept, which laboured through its first race. First, the ‘HiPerf X’ went to the garage to address a broken damper, but soon afterwards, the car developed an engine issue that persisted throughout the race, even after multiple trips to the garage to diagnose the problem.
Kazuhiro Ito, Hideki Yamauchi, Takuto Iguchi, and Masafumi Hanazato combined to complete only 98 laps in five hours, one lap short of the minimum distance for classification.
ST-TCR returned to Super Taikyu for the first time this season, where M&K Racing’s two new Honda Civic Type R TCRs scored a 1-2 finish.
The #97 Honda of Mitsuhiro Endo, Shinji Nakano, Shion Tsujimoto, and Ryusuke Masumoto finished 15th overall and won the class by just 3.3 seconds ahead of the sister #98 Honda of Shigeru ‘Kizuna’ Sato, Lee Jung Woo and Sena Yamamoto. Both cars traded the class lead for most of the race but the #97 eventually overhauled the #98, and Masumoto held off Lee in the closing stages to secure the win.
Third place in class should have gone to the #430 Audi Team Show Apex RS 3 LMS (Yoshinari Fujiwara/Shigetomo Shimono/Ryosuke Kagami/Genki Nishimura) but with less than 15 minutes left, the right-rear suspension broke and Fujiwara was forced to retire short of the goal.
The #225 KTMS Toyota GR Yaris (Kengo Ichijo/Shunji Okumoto/Rikuto Kobayashi/Jin Nakamura) collected its second ST-2 class win of the season in a close race, 13 seconds ahead of the #13 Endless Sports GR Yaris (Masaya Hanazato/Mizuki Ishizaka/Reimei Ito/Hitoshi Okada).
KTMS took the lead after the pole-winning #6 Shinryo Racing Team Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X retired with a mechanical problem. The #72 NATS Honda Civic Type R (Makoto Kanai/Tetsuya Yamano/Toshiya Nojima) finished third in class, while the #95 Team Spoon Civic Type R (Eiji Yamada/Syun Koide/Yusuke Mitsui) dropped out of contention after two drive-through penalties and finished fourth in class.
Endless Sports continues to lead the ST-2 standings, but only by 7.5 points over KTMS.
And in ST-4, the #41 Tracy Sports with Delta Toyota GR86 (Hirotaka Ishii/Yusuke Tomibayashi/Shunsuke Ozaki) scored its first win of the season after taking the lead from the second-placed #3 Endless Sports GR86 (Hiroyuki Saka/Togo Suganami/Ryo Ogawa).
Endless Sports’ lead in the ST-4 standings has now been cut down to just 2.5 points over the defending champions, Tracy Sports with Delta. The #884 SHADE Racing GR86 (Masahiko Kageyama/Yuji Kunimoto/Shinnosuke Yamada/Teppei Tsuruta) finished third and moves down to third in the standings, with the #66 Over Drive Mazda Roadster RF (Kyosuke Inomata/Kohei Tokumasa/Takahisa Ohno/Hirohito Ito) in fourth.
The Eneos Super Taikyu Series Empowered by Bridgestone returns on Saturday 7 September for a one-day event, the Motegi Super Taikyu 5 Hour Race – with same-day qualifying and racing from morning to sunset.
Images © STO, Craft-Bamboo Racing, Nissan
