Toyota teams locked out the top three grid positions in Qualifying for the opening round of the 2026 Autobacs SUPER GT Series at Okayama International Circuit, led by TGR Team KeePer Cerumo’s Toshiki Oyu and Rikuto Kobayashi.
The #38 KeePer Cerumo Toyota GR Supra of Oyu and Kobayashi will start on pole for Sunday’s 82-lap race at Okayama, ahead of reigning GT500 champions Sho Tsuboi and Kenta Yamashita for TGR Team au TOM’S.
In Saturday’s two-stage knockout qualifying session, GT500 rookie Kobayashi timed in third-fastest in Q1 behind session leader Yamashita, split by the #12 TRS Impul with SDG Nissan Z NISMO GT500 of Bertrand Baguette in second. And then in Q2, co-driver Oyu would go on to take the pole in the final seconds of Q2, setting a 1:17.352 around the 3.7-kilometer circuit.
That was enough to edge ahead of the #36 au TOM’S GR Supra of Tsuboi, who could do no better than second with a 1:17.417. The all-Toyota top three was completed by the #14 ENEOS X Prime GR Supra of Nirei Fukuzumi and Kazuya Oshima – course record holder Fukuzumi set a 1:17.481 to put his car on the inside of the second row.
The top three Toyotas were covered by only 0.129s at the end of Q2, and the #39 Denso Kobelco SARD GR Supra (Yuhi Sekiguchi/Sacha Fenestraz), the fastest car in the morning’s practice session, made it four GR Supras in the top five grid positions for tomorrow’s race.
“I did it… I’m at a loss for words,” Oyu said, after notching his fourth career pole position in GT500. “Since I feel like I can run even faster, I was really running high today! Tomorrow is the race – I’m going to do my best. But if my partner Rikuto hears this his heart might start racing, so don’t tell him. Anyway, as a team I want to see us give the best performance possible.”
The fastest of the new Honda HRC Prelude-GTs was the #17 Astemo Prelude-GT of Koudai Tsukakoshi and Yuto Nomura, which qualified fourth (1:17.697); the #16 ARTA Mugen Prelude-GT (Tomoki Nojiri/Ren Sato) and the #100 Stanley Prelude-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino) also made it through to Q2, qualifying sixth and eighth respectively.
But Honda also produced the biggest shock of Q1 after the #8 ARTA Mugen Prelude-GT crashed at the final corner. Hiroki Otsu was seemingly uninjured after a head-on collision with the tyre barrier near turn 11, when his car lost control at Mike Knight Corner (turn 10) and veered off course. But he and co-driver Kakunoshin Ohta will have to start tomorrow’s race from the rear of the GT500 field in 14th.
The blue #12 TRS Impul Z of Kazuki Hiramine and Bertrand Baguette qualified seventh to lead the three-car Nissan brigade in GT500, ahead of the #24 Realize Corporation Z (Teppei Natori/Atsushi Miyake) in ninth, and the #23 Motul Niterra Z (Katsumasa Chiyo/Mitsunori Takaboshi) in tenth.
In GT300, D’station Racing’s #777 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo driven by Tomonobu Fujii and Charlie Fagg stormed to pole position, leading both legs of knockout qualifying.
In the first of two Q1 groups, Fagg recorded the fastest time (1:25.431), sending veteran co-driver Fujii through to Q2 with ease. Fujii would put up a 1:24.561 in Q2 to win the pole, coming within three-tenths of the GT300 qualifying lap record in the process.
“During the off-season we worked on developing tyres with Dunlop, and although the result has been quite a change, I feel good about it,” said Fujii, who took his third career pole. “But in practice the condition of the tyres wasn’t good for me. In qualifying we chose a different compound, and it turned out to be just right! It was a lap time that really surprised me. In last year’s opening round at Okayama we finished second in the qualifying session, so I think it is good that we got pole position today.”
The #2 Hyper Water INGING Toyota GR86 of Yuui Tsutsumi and Kazuhisa Urabe set the best time in practice, and followed it up by qualifying second (1:24.843). The black Toyota moved up a place on the grid after the #31 apr Lexus LC500h of Kazuto Kotaka and Miki Koyama had its best time in Q2 deleted due to a track limits violation when Kotaka overran turn 11 and dipped two wheels in the gravel.
Were it not for that error, Kotaka would have started on the front row, as his deleted time was quick enough for second. Instead, he and Koyama will start third, with Koyama in a good position to potentially become SUPER GT’s first female race winner.
Despite running its Ferrari 296 GT3 without the newest Evo package, Velorex’s #6 Uni-Robo Bluegrass Ferrari (Yoshiaki Katayama/Niklas Krütten) was able to qualify fourth for its home race, well ahead of its two Evo counterparts; they were followed by the #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Tatsuya Kataoka) in fifth, and the #60 Syntium LM corsa Lexus LC500 (Hiroki Yoshimoto/Shunsuke Kohno) in sixth.
Rounding out the top ten grid spots are the #52 Saitama Green Brave Toyota GR Supra (Hiroki Yoshida/Seita Nonaka), the #56 Realize/Nissan Mechanic Challenge GT-R NISMO GT3 (Jõao Paulo de Oliveira/Iori Kimura), the #96 K-tunes Lexus RC F GT3 (Morio Nitta/Shinichi Takagi), and the #11 Gainer Tanax Nissan Fairlady Z (Ryuichiro Tomita/Kazuki Oki), to make it nine unique different vehicle models inside the top ten in GT300 Q2.
Further down the grid, reigning champions Naoya Gamou and Togo Suganami will start 11th in the #65 LEON Pyramid Mercedes-AMG, three places ahead of the #88 Venteny Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2; JLOC’s new addition Daniil Kvyat could only manage 14th-fastest out of 18 cars in Q2, a group completed by the #9 Pacific Umamusume NAC BMW M4 GT3 EVO (Yusuke Tomibayashi/Yuta Fujiwara) in 18th.
Running with its new EG33 flat-six motor, the #61 Subaru BRZ R&D Sport (Takuto Iguchi/Hideki Yamauchi) qualified a disappointing 25th after missing Q2 completely, while the #20 SHADE Racing RC F GT3 (Katsuyuki Hiranaka/Eijiro Shimizu) will start towards the rear after suffering from an ECU problem in Q1.
Sunday’s 82-lap feature race is scheduled to start at 13:20 JST (local time). RACER Network and its streaming counterpart RACER+ will broadcast the race in the United States and Canada, though we are keenly aware that the rest of the world (apart from Japan) will unfortunately be without any means to watch the race legally.
DSC urges the GTA and international distributor HARO Sports & Entertainment to work together and put a solution together for the benefit of its international audience, if not for this weekend, then for the following race at Fuji Speedway.
Images © GTA
