Teppei Natori and Tsugio Matsuda will start on the pole for today’s SUPER GT Autopolis GT 3 Hour Race, after Natori won his first career GT500 pole position aboard the #24 Realize Corporation Advan Nissan Z.
Natori won the pole with a best lap time of 1:33.162, leading an all-Nissan front row alongside the #23 Motul Autech Z of Katsumasa Chiyo and Ronnie Quintarelli, who will start second.
The GT300 and GT500 classes each ran for 30 minutes to set the fastest time ahead of this afternoon’s race, one after the other. Good weather was expected after all of Saturday’s track activity was erased due to rain, fog, and thunder – but instead, competitors and fans were greeted by a damp track and more fog when the gates opened this morning.
Qualifying did proceed as scheduled from 8:00 AM JST, though there was still very low visibility down the frontstretch at Autopolis International Racing Course.
The #14 Eneos X Prime Toyota GR Supra of Kazuya Oshima and Nirei Fukuzumi qualified third, ahead of the #17 Astemo Honda Civic Type R-GT of Koudai Tsukakoshi and Kakunoshin Ohta in fourth place.
Tsukakoshi held provisional pole with less than five minutes left only to be surpassed by Natori, Chiyo, and Fukuzumi in the final minutes and seconds.
The #3 Niterra Motul Z (Mitsunori Takaboshi/Atsushi Miyake) qualified fifth, alongside the #100 Stanley Civic (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino) in sixth, one of the three heaviest cars in the field thanks to its Success Weight and ‘Stage 3’ fuel flow restrictor.
The championship-leading #36 au TOM’S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Kenta Yamashita) was ninth, with the second-ranked #37 Deloitte TOM’S GR Supra (Ukyo Sasahara/Giuliano Alesi) down in 14th.
In GT300, a brilliant final flying lap from Formula One alumnus Roberto Merhi put the #6 Uni-Robo Bluegrass Ferrari 296 GT3 on the pole position. Merhi and Yoshiaki Katayama will share the front row with the #56 Realize/Nissan Mechanic Challenge GT-R GT3 of Daiki Sasaki and João Paulo de Oliveira, which qualified second.
Not only was it the first GT300 pole position for Merhi and for Team LeMans, but his pole run ended a 13-year drought between pole positions for Ferrari in SUPER GT – dating back to May 2011 at Okayama International Circuit.
In third place was the #777 D’station Aston Martin Vantage GT3 (Tomonobu Fujii/Charlie Fagg), taking the last qualifying point ahead of the #96 K-tunes Lexus RC F GT3 (Morio Nitta/Shinichi Takagi) in fourth. In fifth was the fastest GTA-GT300 car, the #20 SHADE Racing Toyota GR86 (Katsuyuki Hiranaka/Eijiro Shimizu).
The #65 LEON Pyramid Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Naoya Gamou/Takuro Shinohara/Haruki Kurosawa) which currently leads the GT300 standings qualified seventh, five spots ahead of the #2 muta Racing GR86 (Yuui Tsutsumi/Hibiki Taira) in 12th.
GT300 Qualifying was interrupted briefly after the #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG of Tatsuya Kataoka spun at 100R Corner and made minor contact with the barriers. It caused Kataoka to lose his best lap from the session – he and Nobuteru Taniguchi will start 24th.
The Autopolis 3H starts this afternoon at 1:20 PM JST (local time).
Feature image © GTA
