One of the SRO Intercontinental GT Challenge’s unique characteristics is how local teams step up to show the world their strengths when the series departs its traditional home in Europe to travel to venues like Bathurst, Indianapolis, and Suzuka. It’s been this way at the Suzuka 1000km since 1981, the first year that international teams were invited to race against top teams from Japan.
This year, a trio of Japanese teams have made a splash by entering in the Pro class and fighting for overall victory against teams loaded with the top factory driving talent that’s available. And at Team 5Zigen, PONOS Racing, and K-tunes Racing, their top drivers are here to prove a point that they are ready and able to fight it out with the very best that the world has to offer.
Team “Go-ji-gen” is a tenured team which has been here, there, and everywhere in domestic competition over the last 35+ years, as high as Japanese Top Formula racing and the GT500 class of SUPER GT. Lately they’ve competed in GT World Challenge Asia with a Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3, a car which fans out west treat like a relic of a bygone age of GT3 racing, but in reality, is still an effective race car capable of winning races against more popular brands with more resources to support their teams.
And while it may not be an official factory-supported programme, the sole Nissan GT-R in the Pro class has put together a luxurious, all-works lineup featuring some of the very best of NISMO: Two-time SUPER GT GT500 championship runner-up Katsumasa Chiyo, the rags-to-riches story of 2022 GT500 champion Kazuki Hiramine, and Atsushi Miyake, a young local hero born just 75 kilometres south of Suzuka in the coastal city of Ise.
Chiyo hasn’t sat idle since his last Intercontinental GT Challenge appearance for Nissan seven years ago, do not be mistaken. But for those who haven’t seen Nissan’s maestro at work in SUPER GT’s top class lately, the spark of his breakout 2015 season was re-ignited when Chiyo set the fastest time in Pre-Qualifying aboard the 5Zigen GT-R.
“The GT3 (Nissan) is something special to me in my life,” admitted Chiyo, who inconceivably turns 40 in a few short months. “Winning Bathurst, winning the Blancpain (GT World Challenge Europe) championship, it made my life change a lot. I think that story took my racing career to something great.” That year also saw Chiyo help lead Nissan customer team Gainer to a GT300 class win at the Suzuka 1000km.
“I love GT3 racing and competing against all the manufacturers and world-class drivers. I’m really excited to be back here in the IGTC with 5Zigen.”
As a long-tenured works driver going back to his days in the original Nissan Driver Development Program (NDDP), Chiyo has ridden through all of the company’s well-documented turmoil over the past few years. And while the GT-R NISMO GT3 is still a strong car, it’s now out of production and has only a limited time left to race – with no guarantee that Nissan will stay in the category with a new car.
All of that is why for Chiyo, it would be especially meaningful for him to give Nissan its eighth overall win at the Suzuka 1000km, and first since 2012.
“Everyone knows that it may be a difficult time for the company. But we appreciate that Nissan continues to race around the world,” he said.
“The GT-R is, I think, the Nissan flagship racing car, so it’s good to have the GT-R back in IGTC with the 5Zigen team. I want to bring good news for all the Nissan fans around the world.”
If you’re the type that’s drawn more towards the new breed of Japanese teams, then PONOS Racing brings that “new money” energy to the grid. In just a few short years, the ambitious outfit owned by game developing tycoon Yorikatsu Tsujiko has grown a large footprint across sports cars and single-seaters, at the domestic and even the international level.
Their weapon of choice is fitting of such a team, the ubiquitous Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo – a car which PONOS Racing also campaigns in SUPER GT.
And their lead driver is a young superstar who, in 2016, first came to the Suzuka 1000km as a 20-year-old phenom new to sports car racing. It took little time for the Honda-supported rookie named Tadasuke Makino to get people’s attention (myself included) when he stepped behind the wheel of Cars Tokai Dream28’s awesome V8-powered Lotus Evora Mother Chassis vehicle.
“It was a good memory for me, a great experience,” Makino recalls. “It felt like a really big Formula 3 car, with a lot of downforce. I was really comfortable in the car, so it was obviously very easy to drive, to be honest.
“It was a good way to show my performance, and then my next race was in GT500 – it was a big, big opportunity for me at Suzuka.”
Over the ensuing decade Makino has grown into one of Honda’s top factory drivers from Japan. He’s won a GT500 championship in SUPER GT, multiple races in Super Formula, and become the first Japanese driver to win an FIA Formula 2 feature race. This weekend he’s stepped into somewhat unfamiliar territory, in a Ferrari, as the star driver for PONOS Racing’s Suzuka 1000km entry.
“Of course our target is to win, but to be honest, there’s a lot of high-level drivers in this category. But I really want to show how competitive SUPER GT drivers can be in the world,” Makino added.
He’s alongside two drivers who may not be front-line talent in former Toyota junior Seita Nonaka and 2024 GT300 class championship runner-up Takuro Shinohara, but both have proven themselves to be stellar talents in SUPER GT’s ultra-competitive “second tier”.
Nonaka does have racing experience in Super Formula, though his two seasons were not so fruitful. Yet he proved a point when he posted the fastest time in the first leg of Qualifying on Saturday evening, while Shinohara and Makino kept things rolling in their respective sessions. It was good enough to put PONOS Racing second on the grid for Sunday’s race, where they’ll also be fighting to give Ferrari its first overall victory in this historic race.
Nissan faces the possibility of a future without GT3 racing once the GT-R reaches the end of its life, but it’s a different story for Lexus and by extension, Toyota. It’s likely that this year’s entry from K-tunes Racing will be the last time the Lexus RC F GT3 races in the Suzuka 1000km, or any IGTC race. The next time a car from a Toyota brand competes here, it may well be the striking new Toyota GR GT3 which launches in 2027.
K-tunes Racing, founded by a group of Toyota dealers from Okayama, doesn’t have the biggest-name talents in the manufacturer’s arsenal this weekend. But it is not without quality; one of its drivers this weekend is Sena Sakaguchi, whose sports car racing career began in earnest with K-tunes. He won two of his first three GT300 starts in a car similar to the one he’ll race on Sunday, on the way to a promotion to Toyota’s GT500 and Super Formula driving fleet.
“Personally, it’s my first time doing the 1000 kilometres,” Sakaguchi said ahead of this weekend’s race. “I’m very honoured to be able to do this with K-tunes, and I’m very happy to be part of it.
“I may have been driving in other, faster cars lately, but GT3 is an international standard and in itself, it can be very difficult and challenging. But I’m very excited to do that this weekend.”
His supporting cast includes a pair of GT300 champions: 2016 Suzuka 1000km class winner Hideki Yamauchi – who normally flies the flag for rival Japanese manufacturer Subaru – and Takamitsu Matsui, the protege of decorated driver/engineer Takeshi Tsuchiya. Not household names outside of Japan, but definitely rich with winning experience in cars similar to the long-serving RC F.
And if this is the RC F’s final opportunity to add to Lexus’ five previous wins in the Suzuka 1000km, Sakaguchi and his teammates want to make the most of it. “The RC F has a lot of history, and I’ll do what I can, I’ll do my best to bring out the best results possible,” he said.
They are the sort of teams which make this race special, and make no mistake: All of them want to win this race.
Images © SRO Motorsports Group / Gruppe C Photography
