SUPER GT Sugo GT 300km Entry List & Notes

The Autobacs SUPER GT Series is finally ready to begin the second half of the 2024 season, weeks after Typhoon Shanshan swept through Japan and forced the postponement of the Suzuka GT 350km Race.

Instead, the fifth round of the 2024 season (though it will still be advertised as “round six” per long-standing Japanese race promotion practices) will take place at Sportsland Sugo, the shortest circuit on the SUPER GT calendar and a circuit notorious for producing eventful, often chaotic races for every series that visits.

42 cars are on the entry list for SUPER GT’s 30th visit to Sportsland Sugo, a course that has been on the calendar every year except 2020. All 15 GT500 teams and 27 GT300 teams have their “main” two-driver line-ups deployed.

This will be the first event since the latest revision of the qualifying format, where teams can now change tyres between Q1 and Q2 – along with additional changes on the GT300 side.

In GT500, the #36 au TOM’S Toyota GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Kenta Yamashita) leads the championship standings by four points over the #100 Stanley Honda Civic Type R-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino). Both cars now have enough Success Weight accumulated to carry the “Stage 2” fuel flow restrictor (90.6 kg/h) plus physical Success Weight in the amount of 48 and 40 kilogrammes, respectively.

Four other cars will carry the “Stage 1” fuel flow restrictor including the most recent winning car, the #8 ARTA Mugen Civic (Tomoki Nojiri/Nobuharu Matsushita), which won the Fuji 350km in August to give the Civic Type R-GT its first victory. The others are the #3 Niterra Motul Nissan Z (Mitsunori Takaboshi/Atsushi Miyake), #14 Eneos X Prime GR Supra (Kazuya Oshima/Nirei Fukuzumi), and the #37 Deloitte TOM’S GR Supra (Ukyo Sasahara/Giuliano Alesi).

Starting this weekend, the three non-Bridgestone teams in GT500 will be able to bring two additional sets of dry weather tyres in an attempt to close the gap. All three cars are light on Success Weight and will run at the standard 95 kg/h fuel flow rate, making this a perfect opportunity for a Yokohama or Dunlop-clad car to finally win a race.

In GT300 the only driver changes since the last round are at the back of the grid, they include veteran Masaki Jyonai hopping back into the #22 R’Qs Mercedes-AMG GT3 and Yusaku Shibata in the #48 Datsumou/K’s Frontier Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3.

But there is a change in the Balance of Performance for this round worth noting: The ride height of all GTA-GT300 original vehicles has been raised. Each car is required to have a spacer between the reference plane (lowest part of the vehicle) and the 10-millimetre skid block, and for this round, that spacer has increased in thickness from 15 mm to 18 mm.

Those three millimetres may not seem like much – but there are a handful of competitors with FIA GT3 cars who hope it will level the playing field without subjecting those teams to excessive BoP weight. It’s also worth noting that last year, the cars that finished first on the road in both classes were disqualified for skid block and ride height violations.

With Success Weight in GT300 now capped at 50 kg, the top six cars in the championship are now at that maximum limit: The championship-leading #2 muta Racing Toyota GR86, #65 LEON Pyramid Mercedes-AMG GT3, #88 Venteny Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2, #777 D’station Aston Martin Vantage GT3, #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG, and #52 Saitama Green Brave Toyota GR Supra.

GT300 will undergo the reworked qualifying format featuring a single 20-minute Q1 session with all 27 cars sharing the shortest track in the series at once.

Feature image © GTA