The sun has risen over Mount Fuji and Fuji International Speedway once again. And with six hours left to run in the Fuji Super TEC 24 Hours, the third quarter of the race has seen misfortune befall several front-runners.
The #3 Endless Nissan GT-R (Yuke Taniguchi/Hideki Yamauchi/Tsubasa Mekaru/Kyosuke Mineo/Jukuchou Sunako/Shinnosuke Yamada) had enjoyed a trouble-free race, until the 15th hour of the race, when the team went in for their first scheduled maintenance break. Shortly after, though, disaster struck as smoke poured from out of the left front wheel.
A brake failure forced the Endless Sports team to take an emergency service. That stop would cost them 15 minutes, and drop them down to sixth place overall while losing 13 laps in the garage.
That stop moves the #83 Phoenix Racing Asia Audi R8 LMS of Keong Wee Lim, Marchy Lee, Melvin Moh, and Max Hofer to the overall lead of the race – in the long run, they’ve only had a collision with a backmarker to overcome, and have had a trouble-free race thereafter.
The #99 GTNET Y’s Distraction GT-R (Teruhiko Hamano/Kazuki Hoshino/Kiyoto Fujinami/Hironobu Yasuda/Sun Zheng) runs in second place overall, and the #81 J-Fly Racing R8 (Jeffrey Lee/André Couto/Shintaro Kawabata/Alessio Picariello) is third. The #777 D’station Porsche 911 GT3-R (Satoshi Hoshino/Seiji Ara/Tsubasa Kondo/Yuya Motojima) runs fourth, ahead of the #244 Max Racing Lexus RC F GT3 (Go Max/Tetsuya Tanaka/Kimiya Sato/Takeshi Tsuchiya) in fifth.
The lone ST-1 and ST-Z cars now run seventh and eighth overall respectively, the #47 D’station Porsche 911 GT3 Cup ahead of the #51 Diamango Porsche Cayman GT4.
In ST-TCR, the #97 Modulo Honda Civic TCR (Tadao Uematsu/Shinji Nakano/Hiroki Otsu/Takashi Kobayashi/Keishi Ishikawa) was cruising out front of the class by several laps, until the left front tyre blew out right as the car rounded the 300R corner after 15 hours, 45 minutes!
It looked as if the #65 L&JR Mars Audi RS3 LMS (Daisuke Imamura/Masanobu Kato/Hiroki Kokuzawa/Toshihiro Yoshida) would then seize the initiative and control of the class lead, but then in the 18th hour, they spun and crashed out at the same corner, bringing out a long Full Course Yellow.
This now promotes the #75 m-1 CarFactory Audi RS3 (Tsukada Toshiro/Yoshikazu Sobu/Yuji Kiyotaki/Kazuyuki Matsumoto/Yukihiro Yamaji/Tadashi Watanabe) to first place in the class, ninth overall, as the attrition continues to mount – so much so that the #97 Civic may be back in podium contention by the end of the race, and the #19 Birth Racing Project Audi RS3 (Hirobon/Yossy/Kei Akiyoshi/Kouichi Okumura/Daisuke Yamawaki/Masanobu Komiya) – that was mistakenly written off as a DNS in our first hour report – is now up to second place in class!
The battle for ST-3 is still raging on between the #68 Saitama Toyopet GreenBrave Toyota Mark X (Naoki Hattori/Shigekazu Wakisaka/Takayuki Hiranuma/Taku Bamba/Togo Suganami), and the #62 Denso Le Beausset Lexus RC350 (Koki Saga/Kenta Yamashita/Ritomo Miyata/Hiroaki Ishiura/Kohei Hirate). The #62 Lexus served the second of its two mandatory 8-minute maintenance stops in the 18th hour, but with two maintenance stops done between the two, its now the #62 Toyota that leads the class and lies 10th overall.
It all came unraveled with 13 hours and 20 minutes elapsed for the #86 TOM’s Spirit Toyota 86 (Takamitsu Matsui/Sho Tsuboi/Yuichi Nakayama/Naoya Gamou) went to the garage with an engine problem, came back out after a 30-minute emergency stop, then stopped before the entrance to pit road after just a handful of laps – all but assuring their seven-race winning streak in the ST-4 class would come to an end.
It looked as if the #55 SunOasis Toyota 86 (Jun Tashiro/Takashi Ito/Masayuki Tanaka/Takashi Oi/Yuichi Mikasa) would inherit the lead, before they suffered a momentary steering failure soon after. That put the #884 Hayashi Telempu Toyota 86 (Katsuyuki Hiranaka/Hiro Hayashi/Hiroki Yoshida/Yuji Kunimoto) at the front of the grid, though the #55 Toyota was able to catch and pass the #884 Toyota soon after. Ultimately, the #884 Toyota of Shade Racing has cycled to the front of the ST-4 field.
ST-2 is still dominated by the #6 Shinryo Auto/Dixcel Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X (Tomohiro Tomimasu/Yasushi Kikuchi/Masazumi Ohashi/Masato Narisawa/Yoshiki Fujii/Setsuo Furuyama) by a significant margin.
And in ST-5, it’s the #88 Murakami Motors Mazda Roadster ND (Hiroyuki Murakami/Keiji Amemiya/Souichiro Yoshida/Takeshi Wakitani/Kuninori Nakane/Haruhiko Sugino) that still has the advantage, as the final six hours of the race are now underway.
Feature image by Yasutaka Sato – Japan Racing Photographers Association
