At Fuji Speedway, Honda’s new HRC Prelude-GTs finished 1-2 on the way to the car’s first-ever Autobacs SUPER GT Series victory. Three weeks later at Suzuka Circuit, Honda and its new GT500 machines took their performance to another level. With the victorious #16 ARTA Mugen HRC Prelude-GT of Tomoki Nojiri and Ren Sato leading the way, Honda won at its original “home circuit” with a sweep of the GT500 podium.
Run at the peak of summer, Sunday’s 52-lap race marked the halfway point of the 2026 SUPER GT season. Honda started the race with four cars in the top five grid positions, with a 20-year-old rookie, Yuto Nomura, leading the field to green in the #17 Astemo Prelude-GT.
Riki Okusa in the #64 Modulo Prelude-GT started second but fell to fourth by the end of the first lap, conceding second place to the #8 ARTA Mugen Prelude-GT of Hiroki Otsu and third to Nojiri in the #16 car at NIPPO Corner. Nojiri then overtook Otsu for second place on lap three, and began chasing down race leader Nomura. By lap eight, the two leading Hondas ran tail-to-nose, weaving through traffic around Suzuka’s narrow, twisting track.
On lap 17, contact between the #45 PONOS Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo of Shintaro Kawabata and the #61 Subaru BRZ R&D Sport of Takuto Iguchi put the Subaru in the gravel at NIPPO Corner. As another race went to waste for Subaru, the Full Course Yellow was deployed to help Iguchi drive out of the gravel and back to the pits. When the FCY was lifted, Okusa took advantage of a slow re-engagement from Otsu to take third place as the pit window opened up.
Race leader Nomura pitted after 18 laps and handed the #17 Astemo Prelude-GT over to Koudai Tsukakoshi, the veteran lead driver of Astemo Real Racing. The #8 ARTA Mugen Prelude-GT also came in at the first opportunity for a driver change to Kakunoshin Ohta. Ohta’s undercut would eventually put the #8 car back in third place, while the #64 Modulo Prelude-GT fell down the order after its stop on lap 19.
Nojiri would run for a few more laps before bringing the #16 ARTA Mugen Prelude-GT into the pits on lap 22 for fuel, tyres, and a driver change to Ren Sato. Sato emerged from the pits in front of Tsukakoshi, but with his tyres not yet up to temperature, it took only three-quarters of a lap for Tsukakoshi to catch and pass him for the lead.
The two leading Hondas ran close together in first and second place and then on lap 36, Sato tried an aggressive lunge up the inside at the Astemo Chicane (Triangle). But Sato overshot the corner and as a result, could not keep ahead of Tsukakoshi.
Just a lap later, though, came the turning point of the race. Tsukakoshi approached 130R corner just as he was about to encounter a slow-moving GT300 car. Taking evasive action, Tsukakoshi ran wide through the tarmac runoff at 130R, which allowed Sato to calmly slip past and into the lead with 16 laps to go.
They remained in that order until lap 48, when Hiroki Yoshida in the #52 Saitama Green Brave Toyota GR Supra lost control at 130R, slid off into the sponge barriers, and did a full rollover. Thankfully, the 2023 GT300 Champion Yoshida was able to walk away from the incident uninjured.
But there would be no time for the race to get going again despite the marshals’ quickest efforts to repair the barriers. The race ended behind the safety car, and Sato took the chequered flag to lead the 1-2-3 finish for Honda…though he had some trouble finding his way towards the winner’s corner of parc ferme afterwards!
“I was confused about where I should park the winning car, because I am not used to winning!” Sato laughed, as he captured his first career GT500 win. “For qualifying they had prepared us a car that was capable of winning pole position, but because of my mistake we couldn’t get it, so in the race I ran with determination to make up for that. And Nojiri-san also passed two cars, so all I had to do was pass one more. This was really terrific.”
For Nojiri, it was his 11th career victory, tying him with reigning champion Kenta Yamashita, and SUPER GT legend Juichi Wakisaka. “We had the best possible performance from the car and the tyres,” said Nojiri. “It ran as we hoped it would, and we were able to pass the other cars aggressively as we wished. In the qualifying things had not gone well for Ren which was disappointing, but I was able to recover from that and turn the car over to Ren with just one car in front of us. After that, Ren also pushed hard, so I truly feel it was a magnificent victory.”
While second place was the #17 Astemo Prelude-GT’s best result of the season so far, this race was just the latest in a long line of painful near-misses with victory at Suzuka for Astemo Real Racing in recent years. Tsukakoshi has now finished second at Suzuka four times without ever winning at the circuit. Still, Nomura could enjoy his first podium finish.
Bringing up the back of the podium sweep was the #8 ARTA Mugen Prelude-GT of Ohta and Otsu, which was the team’s second straight podium finish after opening the year with consecutive finishes outside the top ten.
2025 Suzuka winners Katsumasa Chiyo and Mitsunori Takaboshi finished fourth in the #23 Motul Niterra Nissan Z NISMO GT500, the best of the non-Honda runners. All three Nissans scored points this round, bouncing back from the manufacturer’s first non-scoring race in GT500 since April 2002 at Okayama.
The #38 KeePer Cerumo Toyota GR Supra (Toshiki Oyu/Rikuto Kobayashi) had an understated but solid run to fifth place to lead the Toyota camp, followed by the #12 TRS Impul with SDG Z (Kazuki Hiramine/Bertrand Baguette) in sixth, and the #24 Realize Corporation Z (Teppei Natori/Atsushi Miyake) in seventh.
The #14 ENEOS X Prime GR Supra (Nirei Fukuzumi/Kazuya Oshima) held on at the end to finish eighth. Ninth place on the road was the #64 Modulo Prelude-GT of Okusa and Igor Fraga, ahead of the #36 au TOM’S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Kenta Yamashita). But the #64 Honda was given a post-race time penalty for avoidable contact with the #52 Green Brave GR Supra, in a separate incident before Yoshida’s 130R crash. That knocked Okusa and Fraga out of the points, promoted Tsuboi and Yamashita to ninth, and the #37 Deloitte TOM’S GR Supra (Ukyo Sasahara/Giuliano Alesi) moved up to tenth.
The #37 Deloitte GR Supra overcame a five-second penalty stop at the beginning race for an unapproved engine change. The other car to serve the same penalty was the #100 Stanley Prelude-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino) which laboured to an 11th-place run.
Tsuboi and Yamashita leave Suzuka with a healthy 17-point lead in the championship with four races remaining. With the win today, Nojiri and Sato move up to second in the standings, two points up on Fukuzumi/Oshima who fell to third place.
Pacific Racing Team has raced in SUPER GT for 17 years, representing multiple manufacturers in GT300, but never achieving victory. They were the surprise vessel through which BMW returned to the series with its newest M4 GT3 EVO this year, and through the first three races, hadn’t finished better than 16th.
But after taking a surprising pole position, Yusuke Tomibayashi and Yuta Fujiwara drove the #9 Pacific Umamusume NAC BMW to a comprehensive win in Suzuka, finally giving Pacific Racing its first SUPER GT win.
The first stint would be a moment of truth for starting driver Fujiwara: Suzuka was just his 12th GT300 race, having never finished better than 12th in any of his previous races. The 20-year-old, whose motorsports background includes both circuit racing and drifting, surprised many when he not only kept the lead in the opening lap, but pulled out a healthy lead over the #777 D’station Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of second-place starter Tomonobu Fujii.
Hiroki Yoshimoto held onto third place in the #60 Syntium LM corsa Lexus LC500 after overtaking the #61 Subaru BRZ of Takuto Iguchi. Iguchi would get spun out by Kawabata and that incident brought out the FCY.
The #777 D’station Vantage came in after 16 laps for its pit stop. Three laps later, the #60 Syntium LC500 would pit, and jumped ahead of the Aston Martin. Then, finally, Fujiwara brought the #9 Pacific BMW down pit road, handing the car over to Tomibayashi, a true convert from the sim racing world to full-metal motorsport. But in over four seasons of GT300 racing, Tomibayashi had only one podium, a third-place at Suzuka in 2022.
He would leave the pits well ahead of the #60 Syntium LC500, now driven by Shunsuke Kohno. The #7 CarGuy MKS Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo moved up to third place in the hands of last year’s winner Zak O’Sullivan.
With about 15 laps to go, Tomibayashi’s lead had grown to over 15 seconds, and it was becoming ever more likely that a fairy-tale victory was just about to take place.
Kohno and O’Sullivan battled for second place in class, with O’Sullivan in the Ferrari getting the better of the exchange after several laps. Sadly for the #60 Syntium LC500, it picked up a slow puncture and was forced to take an unscheduled pit stop for tyres. Kohno and Yoshimoto finished 13th.
With nine laps to go, the #52 Green Brave GR Supra of Yoshida and Seita Nonaka had worked its way up from 13th to sixth, but Fraga’s collision with Yoshida, and then Yoshida’s big 130R crash, ended their hopes of a big result, and effectively ended the race. Tomibayashi cruised to take Pacific Racing Team’s first-ever victory.
“Thanks to everyone, we were able to get first place, so I am very happy,” said Fujiwara, who was moved to tears. “This first win makes me so overjoyed that I’m about to cry. I want to express my gratitude to the team, to BMW, and the people at Michelin Tyres for maintaining the great performance to the very end of the race. Thank you so much.”
Pacific Racing Team has been largely staffed by student mechanics from the Nakanihon Automotive College in Gifu Prefecture. Tomibayashi said, “Thanks to everyone’s efforts, we were able to run well in qualifying. In the race, some people thought we would have difficulty, but Yuta Fujiwara ran wonderfully like a veteran despite the fact that he is only 20 years old. Since we were starting from pole position, we were determined to win, and since we had the help of student mechanics from the Nakanihon Automotive College working on our car, and there’s one student for whom this race will be his last – he did a perfect job, so all we had to think about was managing the tyres and driving fast. I want to express my thanks to chairman (Motoki) Jinno and everyone else.”
Following their third-place effort in the Fuji 300km earlier this month, O’Sullivan and 18-year-old rookie Kiyoshi Umegaki took second place in the #7 CarGuy 296.
And the #18 Team UpGarage Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO of Takashi Kobayashi and Kotaro Shimbara rounded out the podium in third; it was Shimbara’s first GT300 podium.
Despite losing about ten seconds in the pits with its Success Refuelling Restrictor, the #777 D’station Vantage of Fujii and Charlie Fagg would claim fourth, finishing ahead of the #56 Realize/Nissan Mechanic Challenge GT-R of João Paulo de Oliveira and Iori Kimura – whose fifth-place finish took them back to the top of the GT300 standings.
The #88 Venteny Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 (Takashi Kogure/Daniil Kvyat) finished sixth and salvaged some dignity for JLOC following the #87 car’s retirement, and in seventh place was the #360 RunUp x SOL GT-R (Rin Arakawa/Yu Kanamaru), Tomei Sports’ best GT300 finish since 2020.
GT3 cars dominated the front of the running order; the #5 Mach Syaken/Air Buster MC86 (Yusuke Shiotsu/Souta Arao) was the ‘best of the rest’ in eighth, ahead of the #11 Gainer Tanax Nissan Fairlady Z (Ryuichiro Tomita/Kazuki Oki) and the #32 ENEOS X Prime AMG GT3 (Hiroaki Ishiura/Tokiya Suzuki) in tenth.
The #31 apr LC500h (Kazuto Kotaka/Miki Koyama) salvaged points in 11th, and debutant Taichi Watarai scored points on debut, despite Sven Müller taking a drive-through penalty for multiple track limits breaches that dropped the #666 seven x seven Porsche 911 GT3 R down to 14th.
Other title contenders in GT300 that had tough days included the #65 LEON Pyramid AMG (Naoya Gamou/Togo Suganami) in 17th and the #2 Hyper Water INGING Toyota GR86 (Yuui Tsutsumi/Kazuhisa Urabe) in 20th, both out of the points after receiving drive-through penalties for incidents. In the #65’s case, Gamou hit the #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG while leaving the pits – adding more pain for Goodsmile Racing & TeamUKYO after a pit lane start caused by a morning Warm-Up session incident. The #2 collided with the #6 Uni-Robo Bluegrass 296 GT3 early in the race.
Oliveira and Kimura now lead the GT300 standings by just one point over Fujii and Fagg. O’Sullivan (-5) and Umegaki (-8) moved up to third and fourth, while Yoshida/Nonaka and Tsutsumi/Urabe (both -9) dropped to fifth and sixth. Just 13 points cover the top nine drivers and driver pairings in the standings after four races.
52,500 spectators endured the summer heat to witness Sunday’s race; SUPER GT returns on 20 September as the series visits Sportsland Sugo, near Sendai in the Tohoku region of Japan, and a circuit that often produces entertaining and chaotic racing.
Images © GTA
