D’station Racing’s Tomonobu Fujii picked up where co-driver Charlie Fagg left off yesterday in the #777 Aston Martin Vantage GT3, taking a perfect pole-to-win victory in Sunday’s GT300-exclusive Fuji GT Sprint Race.
28 GT3 and GTA-GT300 cars raced by themselves for the first time in an Autobacs SUPER GT Series race, for 50 minutes. Fujii set the tone early in the day, with the fastest time in Practice and the fastest time in Qualifying. He took the pole by almost four-tenths of a second over the #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Nobuteru Taniguchi, while the #2 Hyper Water INGING Toyota GR86, which won the pole on Saturday, qualified third via Yuui Tsutsumi.
Tsutsumi overtook Taniguchi for second place on the opening lap, while Fujii established an early lead. Further back, Miki Koyama collided with Yoshiaki Katayama, causing both the #6 Uni-Robo Bluegrass Ferrari 296 GT3 and the #31 apr Lexus LC 500h to retire.
Only a few laps later, the #61 Subaru BRZ R&D Sport of Takuto Iguchi dropped out of fifth place with a mechanical issue.
Fujii and Tsutsumi ran first and second, about a second apart, but in the battle for third, Taniguchi would soon come under pressure from the #65 LEON Pyramid AMG of Togo Suganami, who’d overtaken the #7 CarGuy MKS Ferrari of Zak O’Sullivan for fourth place.
With 15 minutes left, Suganami overtook Taniguchi for the final podium position, and soon Taniguchi’s fourth place would come under threat – from Iori Kimura, in the #5 Mach Syaken/Air Buster MC86!
And behind them, the likes of Seita Nonaka, Harry King, Yuto Nomura, and O’Sullivan scrapped hard outside the top five for big points.
But out front, Fujii was able to complete a lights-to-flag victory for D’station Racing, 1.2 seconds ahead of Tsutsumi in second. It was Fujii’s tenth career GT300 victory, making him the tenth driver in history to reach double-digit career wins in the second division.
Such a performance reminded Fujii of his strong form during the non-championship SUPER GT Fuji Sprint Cup races (held as part of the historic JAF Grand Prix): From 2010 to 2013, Fujii had a win and three podiums. “In the earlier JAF Grands Prix, I had a good performance record. Since this is the same type of race, I was happy to run alone in a GT sprint race again.
“But today there was some real pressure, so I really wanted to get pole position and worked hard to win the race. Especially, the team worked hard from yesterday to fix the car, and it performed so well as a result, and the Dunlop tyres also kept their strong grip throughout the race, so I owe this win to everyone.”
Tsutsumi picked up a well-earned second-place finish, while the LEON AMG of Suganami came home in third.
Suganami and co-driver Naoya Gamou earned enough points over two races to retain their lead in the GT300 Championship standings, but with a near-perfect weekend with two wins and a pole position, Fujii and Charlie Fagg are now four and a half points behind the K2 R&D LEON Racing drivers.
Kimura drove the #5 Mach MC86 to fourth place – Team Mach’s first top-five finish in over three years. Taniguchi rounded out the top five, just ahead of Nonaka in the #52 Saitama Green Brave Toyota GR Supra in sixth.
O’Sullivan finished seventh on the road, but after the race, he received a whopping 40-second post-race time penalty for multiple track limits violations – dropping him to 17th and out of the points.
Nomura moved up to seventh place in the #18 UPGarage AMG GT3, ahead of King, making just his second SUPER GT appearance in the #666 seven x seven Porsche 911 GT3 R. The #45 PONOS Ferrari of Kei Cozzolino was ninth, and after starting shotgun on the field, Kohei Hirate drove the #56 Realize/Nissan Mechanic Challenge GT-R NISMO GT3 up to tenth.
Yuya Motojima, Reiji Hiraki, Yusuke Tomibayashi, Natsu Sakaguchi, and Shinichi Takagi completed the top 15 finishers.
Images © GTA
