On Sunday, GTA Chairman Masaaki Bandoh revealed the final pieces of the 2025 Autobacs SUPER GT Series calendar – the distances of the remaining races. At Bandoh’s pre-race press conference, he confirmed a rumour that has been discussed for months: The summer race at Fuji Speedway on 3/4 August will now be a doubleheader sprint weekend.
There will be races on each day, and while the specifics of the event were not fully disclosed to the public, Bandoh told reporters during Sunday’s press conference that he wants to implement ‘Indy-style’ double-file starts as used in the 2019 SUPER GT X DTM Dream Race (as well as in GT World Challenge Asia) for the Fuji sprints.
Further details, which have already been communicated to teams and drivers, will be announced to the public before the upcoming Fuji GT 3 Hour Race: GW Special on 4 May.
SUPER GT’s annual Golden Week holiday event at Fuji is one of just two long-distance races on this year’s calendar. While the Autopolis round will also be a three-hour race, the other remaining races on the calendar will be the standard 300km distance – including the series’ only date at Suzuka Circuit on 24 August, and the much-anticipated return to Sepang International Circuit on 28 June.
The Sepang 300km will start at approximately 5 PM local time and is expected to finish before sunset. A full night race, which was the proposal for Sepang’s initial return plans in 2020, has been tabled for safety reasons due to the lack of light in the circuit’s run-off areas.
One other important component of the Sepang race that was revealed before the season opener was a limited-capacity grid, due to freight costs and the increased garage space needed for GT500 cars.
As it stands, the event will be limited to a maximum of 35 entries: The 15 GT500 cars, two one-off international entries in GT300, and the 18 full-time GT300 teams with “A” category Seed Rights – which were allocated based on last year’s GT300 Teams’ Championship standings (excluding GT World Asia defector BMW M Team Studie, and Gainer, which forfeited its “A Seed” rights when it sat out the first race of 2024).
With ten cars set to miss out on a chance to race at Sepang, SUPER GT decided to implement a drop score system in GT300 only. Only the seven highest-scoring rounds for each team and driver will be counted – the first time SUPER GT has used dropped scores since 2008.
Images © GTA
