A 52-car provisional entry list has been released ahead of Sunday’s Super Taikyu Suzuka 5 Hour Race, featuring cars from eight classes.
The ST-X (GT3) class grows by one entry as Craft-Bamboo Racing has declared its return to the Eneos Super Taikyu Series Empowered by Bridgestone. The #33 Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO will already have Jeffrey Lee as its ‘A’ Driver for the Suzuka race.
It has since been confirmed that Jayden Ojeda and Kakunoshin Ohta will return to the team for at least this race, though Craft-Bamboo has said it will shuffle its line-up throughout the year.
Craft-Bamboo will join the other five returning ST-X entries from Motegi, led by Round 1 winner seven x seven Racing and the #666 Porsche 911 GT3 R. Hiroyuki “Bankcy” Ogawa, Kiyoto Fujinami, Tsubasa Kondo, and Taichi Watarai took a commanding win in their first race together. Last year’s ST-X winning team, apr, will not have Naoya Gamou available to drive their #31 Lexus RC F GT3 – it’ll be up to Hiroaki Nagai, Rikuto Kobayashi, and Koki Saga to fight for a second consecutive Suzuka win.
ST-Z (GT4) features 12 cars, including the debut of a new team, Prime Racing. With the support of Toyota Gazoo Racing China, Prime Racing’s #315 GR Supra GT4 EVO2 features an all-Chinese driver line-up of Han Lichao, Wang Hao, Shi Wei, and Deng Yi.
All four drivers have had recent exposure to international competition: Shi is coming off her recent F1 Academy wildcard appearance at the Chinese Grand Prix. Han won Race 2 of the inaugural SRO GT Cup round at Shanghai, and has won back-to-back China Endurance GT4 Championships with co-driver Wang. Deng was last year’s Thailand Super Series GT3 runner-up and recently made his GT World Challenge Asia debut at Sepang.
Meanwhile, at Team ZeroOne, there is a significant driver change to note as SUPER GT and Ligier Endurance Series veteran Yuki Tanaka has stepped into the #25 Team ZeroOne Nissan Z NISMO GT4. Tanaka replaces Tadao Uematsu – who wrote on social media that he would not return to the team due to safety concerns around the Z NISMO GT4 platform.
Touring car veteran Samuel Hsieh, a former winner on the streets of Macau, will make his series debut for Progress Racing in the #111 Mercedes-AMG GT4.
Saitama Green Brave and its #52 Toyota GR Supra GT4 EVO2 once again lead the ST-Z standings following its win in the second race of the Motegi double-header weekend. The other race was won by the #26 Team ZeroOne Nissan which has an unchanged line-up.
In ST-Q, Mazda Spirit Racing and Team SDA Engineering make their long-awaited season debuts, bringing back the #12 Mazda Spirit Racing Roadster Future Concept (Hiroshi Kawata/Yuui Tsutsumi/Yutaka Seki/Ikuo Maeda) and the biodiesel-fuelled #55 Mazda Spirit Racing Mazda3 Future Concept (Kazuhiro Terakawa/Kaoru Ijiri/Ryohei Sakaguchi). For Team SDA Engineering, this is the start of year two for the Subaru WRX S4-based #61 HighPerformanceX Future Concept (Kazuhiro Ito/Hideki Yamauchi/Takuto Iguchi/Masafumi Hanazawa).
They’ll join the #104 GR Team SPiRIT Toyota GR Yaris DAT Racing Concept in the four-car exhibition class.
Completing the field of 52 cars are two entries in ST-1, four in ST-3, nine in ST-4, and fifteen across the ST-5F and ST-5R categories.
PROVISIONAL ENTRY LIST >> (thanks to Jesse Young)
The Suzuka 5 Hour Race will stream live and free in Japanese on the official Super Taikyu Series YouTube channel, Super Taikyu TV, with the green flag set to wave at 11:00 AM JST (local time).
Images © STMO
