After persistent rain throughout the morning and afternoon, the teams and drivers in the 50th running of the Suzuka 1000km finally enjoyed running around a somewhat dry Suzuka Circuit to close out Friday in a 90-minute Night Practice session.
75 Express had a bit of a difficult journey to get to Suzuka earlier this week, but the chrome orange #75 Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO will end the first day of on-track action with the fastest time of the day.
A barrage of fast times rolled in early, with the #7 Absolute Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R dipping under the 2:01 range for the first time as Dorian Boccolacci set a 2:00.591. In the 11th minute, Mikaël Grenier – twice an underclass winner of the Suzuka Summer Endurance with 75 Express – leapt to the top with a 2:00.395.
As most teams nailed down their race simulations, the fast French-Canadian’s lap time would not be beaten, and 75 Express would end the day in first place.
The #64 Miedecke Motorsport by Team MPC Ford Mustang GT3 Evo is also off to a galloping start in its first run at Suzuka: Christopher Mies turned in a 2:00.577 with 35 minutes to go, putting the Mustang second on the leaderboard.
Boccolacci’s time in the #7 Absolute Porsche held up for third-quickest.
The fastest Bronze class car was once again the #89 Team KRC BMW M4 GT3 EVO in the hands of Maxime Oosten (2:00.688), which was fourth overall, ahead of the fastest Pro-Am entry, the #60 LM corsa Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo – Giancarlo Fisichella went fifth-fastest with a 2:00.698.
Further back, the #8 AO by Absolute Racing Porsche finally moved towards the front of the leaderboard after an exploratory day: Julien Andlauer set the fastest time aboard Bushi Rex with a 2:00.849.
In seventh was the #45 PONOS Racing Ferrari (Tadasuke Makino, 2:00.881), and in eighth was the #500 Team 5Zigen Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 (Kazuki Hiramine, 2:00.931).
Two more Bronze Cup cars rounded out the overall top ten: The #69 Team WRT BMW (Dan Harper, 2:00.933) and the #80 LM corsa Ferrari (Ryo Ogawa, 2:00.938). Only eight-tenths covered first place down to 12th, a group that also included the #61 EBM Giga Racing Porsche and #77 Craft-Bamboo Racing Mercedes-AMG.
However a pair of Ferrari teams in the lower categories had their sessions disrupted by incidents.
In the 37th minute, Chinese youngster Liu Kaishun brought out the first red flag when he spun the gold #72 Harmony Racing Ferrari off in the Degner Curves, though Harmony was able to resume running after its car was retrieved from the gravel.
Not so lucky was 2011 SUPER GT GT300 champion Taku Bamba, who with less than 16 minutes to go spun off and hit the barrier at the 130R corner; Bamba was able to walk away from the damaged #181 Norik Racing Ferrari, but the impact damaged not only the car but also displaced the protective tyre barrier.
The end of Night Practice was subsequently extended from 7:20 PM to 7:28 PM, but no positions changed at the top of the leaderboard.
Things kick up a notch tomorrow morning: Pre-Qualifying Practice for the Suzuka 1000km starts at 10:40 AM JST, with live streaming coverage of this and all subsequent sessions on the SRO GT World YouTube channel.
Images © SRO Motorsports Group / Gruppe C Photography
