2015.07.25

RC F's dominate top 3! PETRONAS TOM'S RC F clocking top time. Lotus the fastest in GT300.

SUPER GT official test: Day 1

 

The second SUPER GT official test of the year has started at Sportsland SUGO on July 25. A total of two 2-hour sessions, one each in the morning and afternoon, were held on the first day. In the GT500 class, No.36 PETRONAS TOM'S RC F (Daisuke Ito / James Rossiter) marked the top time of the day with a lap time it marked in the afternoon. Mother-chassised No.2 SYNTIUM Apple LOTUS was the fastest in the GT300 class. Afternoon session saw a numerous accidents which forced the exclusive run for each class scheduled at the end of session to be cancelled. The exclusive run is now decided to be held on Day 2 tomorrow by extending the morning session.

 

 

ZENT CERUMO RC F with good footprint at SUGO marks the top time of morning.

Rain fall from the previous night to early morning damped the track surface, and Sportsland SUGO was declared wet right before the session start. However, the track was almost a complete dry by the summer heat when the session started. Some cars started the session on wet tires, but they came right back to the pit without going through the main straight to change to dry tires. In a real sense, all cars started the session with dry tires.

At about 16 minutes into the session, a red flag was shown to collect a fallen object on the track and that brought in the first suspension of the day. In addition, the session was red-flagged almost back to back, at 10:25, 10:35, and 10:51, making it difficult for the cars and drivers to get on the rhythm.

LEXUS RC F's lined up at the top part of timing monitor, showing how well the fleet is keeping up. First to be on top was No.36 PETRONAS TOM'S RC F (Daisuke Ito / James Rossiter), but it was later taken over by No.38 ZENT CERUMO RC F (Yuji Tachikawa / Hiroaki Ishiura). Honda NSX CONCEPT-GT squad was able to have No.100 RAYBRIG NSX CONCEPT-GT (Naoki Yamamoto / Takuya Izawa) breaking into the chain of RC F fleet, but the Nissan GT-R fleet did not see any significant improvements in the lap times and they were moving in and out of the top 10 range.

Nonetheless, it was unclear how each team's car actually was, how much of handicap weight was mounted, whether the fuel restrictor was narrowed, etc. as well as what kind of testing menu was executed and for which race because this test is not only meant for the Round 6 SUGO in September, but it is also for the Round 4 at Fuji coming up in 2 weeks, and, for teams that will not take part in the tire test planned at Suzuka from Wednesday next week, it would be the place to test for the midsummer Suzuka 1000km race held as the fifth round. Therefore, it is clear that the lap times from this test would not be a decisive element to forecast the outcome of next race and beyond. In addition, despite an observation that the condition, such as track temperature, etc., is too different from that of Round 6 SUGO scheduled at the end of September, the air/track temperatures of Day 1 did not go up as expected, and, as a result, it became suitable condition to test tires for the Round 6 SUGO in September.

What became clear by this session was how quick the GT500 cars have gotten. At last year's SUGO event (Round 4: July 19 - 20), the best time from the race became the fastest time of the whole race weekend since the qualifying session was held under a wet condition, and the 1 min 13.667 sec marked by Naoki Yamamoto (Honda NSX CONCEPT-GT) became the course record. In the morning session, 14 out of 15 cars beat this time. Among all, Yuji Tachikawa of ZENT CERUMO RC F, who favors SUGO, recorded 1 min 12.156 sec during the middle stage of session, which became the top time of the morning session.

 

 

Teams put afternoon session for testing race setup but eventually ends with a red flag.

Unlike the morning session where the red flag suspension happened one after another, the afternoon session progressed rather smoothly allowing the cars to run in a long distance as team anticipated. As soon as session started, top cars consistently ran with lap times in the early half of 1 min 12 sec-mark. And then the 1 min 12 sec-barrier was broken by Ito driving No.36 PETRONAS TOM'S RC F when the session reached the 30-minute mark. The car marked even faster lap time after a few laps with 1 min 11.728 sec, a strong sign of how well the car was. No.38 ZENT CERUMO RC F, which marked the top time of the morning session, put its lap time in the 11 sec-mark this time with Ishiura behind the wheel, but it had to settle with a second place falling short behind No.36 PETRONAS TOM'S RC F.

Meantime while the session progressed in such way, an accident happen when the mix run of GT500 and GT300 classes was about to come to an end. No.61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT of GT300 class went off the track in the area after Turn 3 and crashed into the sponge barrier. That caused the car to catch on fire. The session was suspended with a red flag and eventually came to a close without resuming. The exclusive runs for GT500 and GT300 initially scheduled to take place following the mix run have been decided to take place right after the morning session of Day 2 tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

Lotus and 86 built on the mother-chassis are on the good tune.

 

 

For the mother-chassised cars which are disadvantageous in terms of the engine power, Sportsland SUGO is one of their favorite circuits. As if to prove that, No.2 SYNTIUM Apple LOTUS (Kazuho Takahashi / Hiroki Katoh) marked the top time in both of the two sessions in the morning and afternoon.

Despite his comment, "Because the car was light with less fuel..," Katoh was the only driver to lap in the 1 min 20 sec-mark in the morning session and beat Kouta Sasaki's (SUBARU BRZ) track record. No.2 SYNTIUM Apple LOTUS reduced the lap time even further in the afternoon and broke the 1 min 20 sec barrier to eventually cut down to a lap time of 1 min 19.320 sec.

Following behind the Lotus was No.25 VivaC 86 MC (Takeshi Tsuchiya / Takamitsu Matsui / Tatsuya Tanigawa), and Tsuchiya sliced the lap time down to 1 min 20.109 sec, which was also an impressive record-breaking time. So the performance shown by the mother-chassised cars was prominent finishing 1 and 2.

No.61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Takuto Iguchi / Hideki Yamauchi) that crashed in the closing phase of afternoon session caught on fire due to a cut on the fuel line it suffered from the crash, and, although Yamauchi who was driving the car is okay, it seems that the car have suffered severe damage. The team will cancel the test tomorrow and quickly start repairing work towards the Round 4 Fuji.

 

 

 

 

During the lap when I marked the top time I was caught behind a slower car, so if that didn't happen, then I should have been able to go 0.2 to 0.3 second faster. Anyways, that is a good sign that we have some advantage. However, the rivals seemed to have a lot of weight on the car and some even had the restrictor narrowed, so I'm not sure if this result will become the actual difference at the race. But in terms of our car I could feel the power is coming out of the engine and also was able to find a set of tires with good potential. Although the car will not be completely the same (since it will be set up in Fuji spec), it was good that we were able to make verification for the Round 4 Fuji.

 

We found a direction (towards improvement) from the last race in Thailand, and the main menu of this test is to verify that. We found a clue last time we tested here and that lead to (the impressive run in) Thailand and that's why we decided to test at the same SUGO after we were back in Japan. We also reviewed the geometry a little bid to find a balance in between from low-speed to mid- and high-speed. Since we were focusing on checking the basic setup rather than for a particular race plus the car was light because we didn't put that much of fuel, we are not extra delighted, but we had really good discovery here this time.

 

 

 

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