It came down to the final corner, but the baby blue #500 Team 5Zigen Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 of Hiromasa “Hirobon” Kitano and Yu Kanamaru held on for a famous victory in GT World Challenge Asia Race 1 at Suzuka Circuit.
Kamamaru held off no less than star Porsche junior works driver Laurin Henrich by two-tenths of a second to take the GT-R’s first win in GT World Challenge Asia since 2018, and the first win in any SRO-sanctioned series since 2021.
In qualifying, Akash Neil Nandy won the pole position in his #41 Audi Sport Asia Team Absolute R8, leading an all-Audi front row with Franky Congfu Cheng in the #36 Team FAW Audi. But Cheng got past Nandy on the first green flag lap of the race to take the lead, while Hirobon eventually worked his way past the #87 Origine Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R of Bo Yuan to take third place.
There were two early Safety Cars for a pair of single-car incidents: Vutthikorn Inthraphuvasak slid off at the Hairpin in his #93 AAS Phantom Global Porsche, then a few laps later, Yudai Uchida – in his first race of 2024 driving the #63 VSR Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 – went off in the S-Curves.
It was during the Safety Car for Uchida’s incident that the pit window opened, and every car on track went in for routine work and driver changes. The #41 Absolute Audi dropped to 11th after James Yu Kuai got in the car, but the big winner was the #500 5Zigen Nissan, which jumped to the lead with Kanamaru ahead of the two Origine Porsches – the #87 of Leo Ye Hongli and the #4 of Heinrich.
Kanamaru led after the restart, then again following a third and final safety car when the #52 Climax Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Li Lichao went off at 130R, thankfully not a serious accident but one that forced Li and Liu Hangcheng to drop out of the race.
With nine minutes left, Kanamaru led the field back to racing, while Heinrich overtook Ye for second place overall. The #36 FAW Audi of Adderly Fong then overtook Ye for third, but Ye hit Fong at turn two and sent the Audi spinning out – Ye would receive a drive-through penalty for avoidable contact which took the #87 Origine Porsche out of contention, down to 24th overall.
Heinrich put pressure on Kanamaru, but the Japanese journeyman racer – who trained in single-seaters in Europe but had never got the call to race in SUPER GT or Super Formula – was able to stay ahead, and despite a sketchy exit out of the Triangle chicane, the grunt of the GT-R’s twin-turbo V6 had enough power to allow Kanamaru to fend off Heinrich by 0.206 seconds.
Nissan’s last win in GT World Challenge Asia with the GT-R NISMO GT3 came in Race 1 at Fuji Speedway six years ago, won by Yukinori Taniguchi and Alexandre Imperatori for KCMG. Since 2020, Nissan’s presence in GT3 racing outside of Japan’s two biggest series – SUPER GT GT300 and Super Taikyu ST-X – has vanished, and now the R35 GT-R is nearing the end of its 17-year production run.
To find the last GT-R GT3 victory in SRO regulation racing, you’ll have to go back to the 2021 GT World Challenge Australia season where Brett Hobson won at Tailem Bend in his first-generation GT-R.
However, Team 5Zigen, Kitano and Kanamaru aren’t strangers to success around Suzuka – they won together with this same car in the 2023 Suzuka Super Taikyu 5 Hour Race.
The Pro-Am combo of Heinrich and Lu Wei finished second overall for Origine Motorsport, followed by the #888 Triple Eight JMR Mercedes (Prince Abu Bakar Ibrahim/Mikaël Grenier) which rounded off the podium in third place.
Five different makes were represented in the top five, with the #296 Absolute Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 (André Canard/Finn Gehrsitz) in fourth, and the #40 Absolute Audi (Huang Ruo Han/Markus Winkelhock) in fifth. The #18 Porsche Center Okazaki GT3 R (Hiroaki Nagai/Yuta Kamimura) gained ten places to finish sixth.
Seventh was the Silver class-winning #911 Absolute Racing Porsche (Tanart Sathienthirakul/Eshan Pieris), followed by the #1 Absolute Porsche (Anthony Liu Xu/Alessio Picariello) – Picariello put on a dazzling display of overtakes to go from 19th to 12th in one lap following his pit stop.
Completing the top ten were the #89 Team KRC BMW M4 GT3 (Ruan Cun Fan/Maxime Oosten) and the #41 Absolute Audi of Nandy and James Yu.
Lu Wei retakes the Drivers’ Championship lead by four points over Liu and Picariello heading into tomorrow’s race, while Ye and Bo slip to third place but only ten points back.
Am class honours went to the #75 Garage 75 Ferrari (David Tjiptobiantoro/Christian Colombo) in 16th.
Of note, the #66 Climax Racing Mercedes (Bihuang Zhou/Jules Gounon) finished 18th after a disastrous pit stop in which the splitter of the #77 Harmony Racing Ferrari clipped Gounon’s ankle, and a mechanic’s finger was cut in the collision – neither injury was serious. The #66 Mercedes also got its driver-side door struck, which came loose at the end of the race.
Two-time Le Mans winner Timo Bernhard’s first competitive race as a driver since 2020 ended prematurely when his #13 Phantom Global Racing Porsche (shared with Sun Jingzu) stopped past Degner II with 25 minutes left.
Following a crash in qualifying, the #60 LM corsa Ferrari (Kei Nakanishi/Shigekazu Wakisaka) was scratched from the grid. The younger of the Wakisaka brothers was unhurt after crashing on the run to Spoon Corner, but the car could not be repaired in time to start.
Images © SRO Motorsports Group Asia
