For the first time in 385 days, a manufacturer other than Toyota has won in the premier class of the Autobacs SUPER GT Series. But perhaps to the dismay of Honda supporters at Suzuka Circuit, this time it was a Nissan which took the top prize.
On a scorching hot summer afternoon, NISMO drivers Katsumasa Chiyo and Mitsunori Takaboshi drove their #23 Motul Autech Nissan Z NISMO GT500 to victory at the Suzuka GT 300km Race.
Even with a late afternoon start, spectators and competitors alike were subject to brutal temperatures of 35ºC at the start of Sunday’s 52-lap race. With no Success Weight to contend with, the blue #16 ARTA Mugen Honda Civic Type R-GT of Hiroki Otsu and Ren Sato was determined to make the most of its chance to win.
Otsu led the GT500 field into the first couple of corners, followed by the two NISMO Zs of Takaboshi in second, and the #3 Niterra Motul Z of Daiki Sasaki in third. Behind them was local legend Tsugio Matsuda in the #24 Realize Corporation Advan Z: The driver with the most wins in GT500 history was celebrating his 200th championship race.
But his celebration quickly turned into a nightmare: Matsuda went off at 130R and dropped to 14th on lap two, then at the end of lap four, he collided with the #17 Astemo Civic of Syun Koide going into the Hitachi Astemo Chicane. In this stroke of cruel irony, Koide crashed into the sponge barriers, bringing out a Safety Car. Astemo Real Racing’s hard luck at Suzuka continued, while Matsuda was given a drive-through penalty for causing the collision–he and Teppei Natori finished 13th.
The race restarted on lap nine; Otsu continued to lead the race, but soon came under threat from the second place car of Takaboshi.
The window for routine pit stops opened on lap 18 – the #16 ARTA Civic and #23 Motul Z came in at the first opportunity. ARTA’s crew had a quick stop, but NISMO had an even better one – and 1.8 seconds was the difference that got Chiyo out ahead of Sato for the net lead.
Sato’s challenge was blunted further when the #3 Niterra Z made its pit stop a lap later, and Atsushi Miyake (another local hero) was able to stay ahead of the blue Honda even on cold tyres.
But the biggest move was made on lap 20, when the #14 Eneos X Prime GR Supra came in for its stop. After the driver change from Nirei Fukuzumi to Kazuya Oshima, the Toyota which started seventh had moved up to net second place, four seconds behind race leader Chiyo!
Two Toyotas, the #37 Deloitte TOM’S GR Supra and the #39 Denso Kobelco SARD GR Supra, ran an inverted strategy with a long first stint. But the #37 Deloitte GR Supra of Ukyo Sasahara suffered a right-rear puncture, forcing him in earlier than scheduled on lap 29. Yuhi Sekiguchi brought the #39 Denso GR Supra in from first place on lap 32, handing the lead to its true holder Chiyo with 20 to go.
A Full Course Yellow was deployed on lap 35 after the #26 Anest Iwata Racing Lexus RC F GT3 broke down beyond the underpass, and was lifted two laps later.
Oshima was able to get the gap down to about one second at one point, a remarkable feat for a car that was carrying 50 kilos of physical Success Ballast and the ‘Stage 1’ fuel flow restrictor. For a moment, it appeared as if Toyota could get its tenth straight GT500 win–but that was as close as Oshima got in the remaining ten laps.
Chiyo was able to hang on to give NISMO’s flagship #23 car its first win since the 2023 season opener at Okayama. 477 days had passed since Nissan’s last GT500 win, and despite all the troubles for the manufacturer as a whole, they will at least avoid their first winless GT500 season since 2002.
The #23 Motul Z finished 5.768 seconds ahead of the #14 Eneos GR Supra of Oshima and Fukuzumi, who turned in a terrific result right after Fukuzumi won the second Fuji Sprint race earlier this month.
Toyota’s winning streak ended, but especially in the context of the struggles of Toyota’s other major top-class endurance racing programme this year, it was a run that won’t soon be forgotten, and one we may never see again in the history of the SUPER GT Series.
The #3 Niterra Z of Sasaki and Miyake finished third, a good result for the duo as they prepare to join forces in the upcoming Suzuka 1000km on 21 September. It put the two NISMO-run Z-cars on the podium, shutting Honda out.
And while the #16 ARTA Civic of Otsu and Sato was happy to break its pointless drought to open the season, a fourth-place finish felt like a missed opportunity for them, and for Honda’s GT500 fleet in its entirety.
The #38 KeePer Cerumo GR Supra (Hiroaki Ishiura/Toshiki Oyu) capitalised on a mistake from the #12 TRS Impul Z of Kazuki Hiramine to grab fifth place with five laps to go, which is where they finished.
But the star of the second stint was Sacha Fenestraz, who wheeled his #39 Denso GR Supra from tenth after taking over from co-driver Sekiguchi, up to sixth with some terrific overtakes on a fresh set of Bridgestone tyres. This included a daring lunge up the inside of his Super Formula teammate Sho Tsuboi into turns one and two; the Sacha Fenestraz that fans came to know before his Formula E move is back in form.
Making his final Suzuka start, Takuya Izawa finished seventh in the #64 Modulo Civic, alongside Riki Okusa. The #12 TRS Impul Z of Hiramine and Baguette was eighth, ahead of the championship-leading #1 au TOM’S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Kenta Yamashita) in ninth, and the #100 Stanley Civic (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino) in tenth, completing the points-paying positions.
Tsuboi and Yamashita still lead the championship standings as they’ve done all season, while Oshima and Fukuzumi moved up to second in the standings, 10 points out of first place. Ishiura and Oyu (-15.5 points) remain third in the table, while Sasahara and Giuliano Alesi (-21) fell to fourth. Chiyo and Takaboshi’s victory makes them “best of the rest” in fifth (-29.5).
It took over 15 years for Ferrari to get its first SUPER GT win since 2009, at the Fuji GT 3 Hours Race. And like buses in London, Ferrari only had to wait a little over three months to get back on top of GT300 again, thanks to the youngest team in the class.
CarGuy MKS Racing and drivers Zak O’Sullivan and Rikuto Kobayashi powered through for their first-ever victories.
28 cars were due to start when the morning began, but a miserable run of luck for SHADE Racing continued in the morning warm-up session when the car caught fire during a practice pit stop. Lead driver Katsuyuki Hiranaka and a SHADE Racing mechanic suffered burns, but were not in any serious or incapacitating condition.
An old adage from IMSA’s circles was proven right here, and SHADE’s #20 GR86, that had just been rebuilt after a testing fire at the same venue three months ago, was scratched from the field.
In the #61 Subaru BRZ R&D Sport, polesitter Takuto Iguchi led the opening phase of the race, hungry for Subaru’s first win in three years. But in a mirror image of GT500, Iguchi couldn’t shake the second place car, the black and yellow #7 Ferrari of O’Sullivan.
They ran tail-to-nose until the first round of pit stops. After 19 laps, the CarGuy Ferrari pitted for its routine stop, while the #61 Subaru BRZ continued to lead.
One lap later, the #5 Mach Syaken/Air Buster MC86 of Yusuke Shiotsu came in for its stop. Iori Kimura emerged ahead of Kobayashi in the #7 Ferrari, but they’d both be overtaken by the #60 Syntium LM corsa Lexus LC500 for the net lead, after Shunsuke Kohno passed the baton to Rikuto Kobayashi.
Finally after 23 laps, Iguchi brought the #61 Subaru in for its stop, but a slow stop saw Hideki Yamauchi fall down the order as he got back on course.
As the last GT300 cars made their routine stops, Kobayashi had caught Yoshimoto for the net lead. And with 15 laps to go, Kobayashi got an excellent run out of the Nissin Brake Hairpin, capitalised on a brief error from Yoshimoto in traffic, then sailed past into Spoon Curve to take the GT300 lead.
Kobayashi wouldn’t look back, and the #7 CarGuy MKS Ferrari cruised to its first win in SUPER GT.
The combination of O’Sullivan, the ex-Williams Racing Academy pupil finding new life in Japan after hitting a harsh roadblock in Europe–and Kobayashi, a top Toyota prospect (no relation to Kamui) and a successful real world/esports crossover athlete made good on their promise.
And for Team Director Misato Haga, it was a huge win – her first as a SUPER GT team leader since 2008.
The #60 Syntium LC500 took the chequered flag 15 seconds in arrears, for what would have been their first podium since 2021. But it was a mirage for Yoshimoto and Kohno. After the race, the car was found to be 800 grams underweight, and the #60 team was disqualified.
This moved the #61 Subaru of Iguchi and Yamauchi back up to second place, a consolation podium and their first since 2023.
And after falling to fourth at the chequered flag, the #5 Mach MC86 of Shiotsu and Kimura was elevated back up to third place.
Team Mach scored its first podium since adopting Toyota 86 MC, Mother Chassis #0014, in 2023, and it may end up being the final great act of the GT300 Mother Chassis formula in SUPER GT, as Tetsuji Tamanaka’s team from Fukuoka is the Mother Chassis’ last runner.
The #45 PONOS Racing Ferrari (Kei Cozzolino/Takuro Shinohara) finished fourth, and Ferrari could have gotten all of its cars in the top five, were it not for a devastating puncture for the #6 Uni-Robo Bluegrass Ferrari (Yoshiaki Katayama/Roberto Merhi) with five laps remaining.
Merhi cut down the right rear tyre approaching 130R while running fifth, only four laps after the #777 D’station Aston Martin Vantage GT3 of Tomonobu Fujii had a left rear puncture after he’d passed the pit entrance barrier. Fujii and Charlie Fagg finished 3 laps down in 24th, while Merhi was 18th.
Despite a five-second time penalty for rough driving, the #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Tatsuya Kataoka) was still able to finish fifth, building momentum for the 1000km.
The #666 seven x seven Porsche 911 GT3 R (Tsubasa Kondo/Harry King) battled back from a drive-through penalty to finish seventh on the road, which would have put them sixth – only to be demoted to ninth after taking a 40-second time penalty for an FCY infraction.
That meant the #52 Saitama Green Brave Toyota GR Supra (Hiroki Yoshida/Seita Nonaka) would come home sixth, the #0 Venteny Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 (Takashi Kogure/Yuya Motojima) would be seventh, and the #56 Realize/Nissan Mechanic Challenge GT-R NISMO GT3 (João Paulo de Oliveira/Kohei Hirate) would be eighth.
The #11 Gainer Tanax Nissan Fairlady Z (Ryuichiro Tomita/Kazuki Oki) completed the top ten, ahead of the #18 UPGarage AMG GT3, the #2 Hyper Water INGING GR86, #65 LEON Pyramid AMG, #96 K-tunes RC F GT3, and #62 HELM Motorsports GT-R.
Even after finishing 13th, K2 R&D LEON Racing’s Naoya Gamou and Togo Suganami were able to maintain a 7.5-point lead over D’station’s Fujii and Fagg, who scored no points. INGING’s Yuui Tsutsumi/Hibiki Taira remain third in the table (-11.5), as do Goodsmile’s Taniguchi/Kataoka (-16.5). But O’Sullivan/Kobayashi leapt all the way to fifth in the standings with their victory.
Down in 23rd, R’Qs Motor Sports’ owner/driver Hisashi Wada also celebrated his 200th SUPER GT championship race on the same weekend as Matsuda. They became the fifth and sixth drivers to eclipse the milestone, joining Morio Nitta (230), Manabu Orido (216), Shinichi Takagi (213), and Yuji Tachikawa (205).
With the fireworks at Suzuka in the rear view, SUPER GT returns in four weeks to Tohoku’s beautiful, dangerous, and captivating Sportsland SUGO, for the 300km race on 21 September.
Images © GTA
