The summer of Honda in the Autobacs SUPER GT Series rolled along at Sportsland Sugo on Sunday as the #17 Astemo Honda HRC Prelude-GT of Koudai Tsukakoshi and Yuto Nomura picked up the win for Astemo Real Racing in an entertaining race.
It’s Honda’s third win in a row, following Team Kunimitsu’s victory in the Fuji 300km race in August, and the #16 ARTA Mugen Prelude-GT’s win at Suzuka four weeks ago.
Sunday’s 84-lap feature race began behind the Safety Car, overnight and morning rain showers created a damp track at the start. Thankfully, competitors and fans evaded the worst of the weather which had been threatening to hit Eastern Japan leading up to the weekend. Polesitter Riki Okusa in the #64 Modulo Prelude-GT made the most of these early laps, holding off Nomura in the opening stint.
Nomura fell to third before the Safety Car was deployed on lap 26: The #30 apr Toyota GR86 of Hiroaki Nagai spun out while exiting the 110R corner, right into the path of the #16 ARTA Mugen Prelude-GT of Tomoki Nojiri. The two cars collided near the entry of pit lane, though thankfully both Nagai and Nojiri were unhurt.
Seeking an opportunity to regain position, Nomura brought the #17 Honda into the pits as the Safety Car withdrew, and he was able to successfully undercut the #64 Honda – whose Dunlop tyres once again struggled to warm up quick enough to maintain its ranking. Worse still, Igor Fraga went off course during his second stint, and in the end, Modulo Nakajima Racing’s streak of futility continued – Okusa and Fraga finished only 12th after the strong start.
Once Tsukakoshi emerged with the net lead, the 19-year veteran drove a flawless closing stint, maintaining a 4.729 second lead as the chequered flag came down. It’s his and the Real Racing team’s first win since October 2022 at Autopolis, their seventh victory together. Meanwhile, Nomura picked up his first top-class victory in Super GT in just his fifth GT500 start; he becomes the third-youngest GT500 race winner (20 years, 312 days) in series history, trailing only Ralf Schumacher and Koji Yamanishi.
Finishing second at Sugo for the second year in a row was the #39 Denso Kobelco SARD Toyota GR Supra of Yuhi Sekiguchi and Sacha Fenestraz, which fell out of the top ten early on before Fenestraz led a recovery drive through the field to take second place, fending off the #100 Stanley Prelude-GT of Naoki Yamamoto and Tadasuke Makino in third.
Championship leaders Sho Tsuboi and Kenta Yamashita overcame their maximum Success Ballast handicap to finish fourth in the #36 au TOM’S GR Supra, and picked up eight crucial points to maintain their lead in the GT500 standings with three races left.
The #37 Deloitte TOM’S GR Supra (Ukyo Sasahara/Giuliano Alesi) finished fifth, ahead of the Yokohama-clad #19 WedsSport Bandoh GR Supra (Yuji Kunimoto/Sena Sakaguchi) in sixth. Of the three Nissans, the best finisher was the #24 Realize Corporation Nissan Z NISMO GT500 (Teppei Natori/Atsushi Miyake) in seventh; a gearbox failure struck down the #12 TRS Impul with SDG Z (Kazuki Hiramine/Bertrand Baguette) as it was running in a strong third place.
With three races left, Tsuboi and Yamashita lead the GT500 championship by 13 points over Sunday’s winners Tsukakoshi and Nomura – who leapt from seventh to second in the standings.
In GT300, the winner of the day was the #60 Syntium LM corsa Lexus LC500 of Hiroki Yoshimoto and Shunsuke Kohno, who led most of the race as the GTA-GT300 Lexus scored back-to-back wins at the 3.5-kilometre Sugo circuit.
But in terms of the championship picture, the big winners were João Paulo de Oliveira and Iori Kimura, who finished second in the #56 Realize/Nissan Mechanic Challenge GT-R NISMO GT3 and blew their points lead wide open. After Kimura climbed from 19th on the grid, Kondo Racing took fuel only on their pit stop to take the net lead in class, and Oliveira was looking good to win the race – until a collision with a GT500 car allowed Kohno to slip past him at Hi-Point Corner.
The #56 Realize GT-R held off the #61 Subaru BRZ R&D Sport (Takuto Iguchi/Hideki Yamauchi) which finally put together a clean race to finish third. The #666 seven x seven Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R (Sven Müller/Taichi Watarai) salvaged fourth despite a slow pit stop, while the #18 UpGarage Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO (Takashi Kobayashi/Kotaro Shimbara) had another good result in fifth, just ahead of the #11 Gainer Tanax Nissan Fairlady Z (Ryuichiro Tomita/Kazuki Oki) in sixth.
Meanwhile, the #7 CarGuy MKS Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo (Zak O’Sullivan/Kiyoshi Umegaki) suffered a cruel blow on the final lap when it ran out of fuel, dropping it from fourth to ninth. Then Umegaki was handed a 40-second post-race time penalty for failing to bring the car to a safe stop, dropping the Ferrari further down to 13th.
With that massive loss, Oliveira and Kimura now lead the GT300 standings by 21 points over the #777 D’station Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo (Tomonobu Fujii/Charlie Fagg), who finished outside the points in 21st. O’Sullivan is third in points, trailing by 22.
SUPER GT returns on 18 October when Autopolis International Racing Course in Kyushu hosts the second long-distance race of the season.
More to follow…
Images © GTA
