2016.07.24

No. 31 TOYOTA PRIUS apr GT takes its first win of the season

Round4 Sportsland Sugo : Race GT300 Review

The SUGO GT 300km RACE, Round 4 of the 2016 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series, was held at Sportsland SUGO (Miyagi Prefecture) on July 24. In the GT500 class, the No. 24 Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R driven by Daiki Sasaki and Masataka Yanagida came from 9th position on the starting grid and used a no-tire-change strategy to score a brilliant come-from-behind victory.
The GT300 race was won by the No. 31 TOYOTA PRIUS apr GT driven by Koki Saga and Yuichi Nakayama.

 

 

 

 

The track was wet during the morning practice from the previous night’s rain. But, by the start of the race in the afternoon it was almost completely dry and all the machines lined up on the grid for the start of the race with slick tires. The No. 50 ODYSSEY SLS (Rintaro Kubo) that didn’t make it to the grid had to make a pit start.
After the Parade Lap led by vehicles of the Miyagi Prefectural Police, the Safety Car led the cars through the Formation Lap and then the race started at 2:06.

The pole-starting No. 25 VivaC 86 MC (Takeshi Tsuchiya) kept the lead position through the first turn. After a stunning dash, the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Hideki Yamauchi) moved up from 3rd position into 2nd. Following them was the No. 31 TOYOTA PRIUS apr GT (Koki Saga). The early stages of the race these three cars formed the top group, while the No. 11 GAINER TANAX AMG GT3 (Bjorn Wirdheim) and No. 18 UPGARAGE BANDOH 86 (Nakayama Yuhki) followed slightly behind.
Meanwhile, the No. 65 LEON CVSTOS AMG-GT (Haruki Kurosawa) that had been pushed off the track at the first turn after the start by the following group, had ended up almost at the back of the entire pack. The No. 2 SYNTIUM Apple LOTUS (Kazuho Takahashi) and the No. 0 GAINER TANAX GT-R (Andre Couto) that had started in 11th and 15th positions on the grid also spun out and lost considerable ground.

Running in the lead in the GT300 class race, car No. 25 gradually began to open up a margin of lead over car No. 61 in 2nd place. Meanwhile, car No. 11 was closing in on car No. 31 in 3rd position and on the 24th lap No. 31 had to give up that spot in the order. There were no other big changes in the race until the 25th lap. On the last corner, No. 5 MACH SYAKEN MC86 (Junichiro Yamashita) crashed. To take care of the situation, the Safety Car (SC) had to be brought out. This resulted in major confusion due to the new regulation prohibiting pit stops during a SC run and also because of the fact that it was still early to be making a first routing pit stop. But the result was that the nearly 8-second lead that car No. 25 had built up to that point vanished in a moment.

 

 

The GT300 race was restarted from the 30th lap for the leaders. At this point, each team had to decide whether to make an early pit stop or to led the cars now light with their smaller load of fuel pick up the pace and continue racing. The decisions were divided. The first two machines that opted to make their pit stop when the pit lane opened on their 29th lap were the No. 31 TOYOTA PRIUS apr GT (change to Yuichi Nakayama) that had dropped to 4th position and the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG (Tatsuya Kataoka changed to Nobuteru Taniguchi) then in 7th place. On the next lap the 2nd-place running No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (changed to Takuto Iguchi) made its pit stop.
The leading No. 25 VivaC 86 MC also made its pit stop on lap 31. The driver change was made to Takamitsu Matsui and only the two tires on the left-hand side were changed. This left the No. 11 GAINER TANAX AMG GT3 and Wirdheim drove on to the 38th lap before turning over the wheel to Katsuyuki Hiranaka.

When all the leaders had finished their pit stops, the No. 88 MANEPA LAMBORGHINI GT3 was effectively in the lead. After driving on to the 48th lap, Kazuki Hiramine turned the car over to Manabu Orido, who left the pit to return to the race after no tire change to save time.
This gave car No. 88 a lead of nearly seven seconds over the chasing No. 18 UPGARAGE BANDOH 86 (Shinnosuke Yamada) in 2nd place, but that gap gradually narrowed despite Orido’s efforts due to the unavoidable wear on the unchanged tires. But the pace of the GT rookie Yamada wasn’t that good, and he was eventually passed by the No. 25 VivaC 86 MC (Matsui) and the No. 31 TOYOTA PRIUS apr GT (Nakayama).
This brought the battle for the lead down to cars No. 88, No. 25 and No. 31. By the 60th lap the three cars were bunched together and battling in a dead heat. There, Nakayama in car No. 31 took advantage of No. 25’s concentration on passing No. 88and found a gap to pass it into 2nd position at the high point of lap 62. Keeping its momentum, car No. 31 went on to pass No. 88 on the next lap to finally take the lead. No. 88 was also passed by No. 25 on the 65th lap 65, and with its tires worn to the limit it gradually fell back in position.

After that, the leading car No. 31 continued to maintain a gap of three seconds over car No. 25 now in 2nd place. But, rather than catching No. 31, No. 25 was now being threatened from behind by the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Iguchi). Furthermore, another one second behind came the No. 11 GAINER TANAX AMG GT3 (Hiranaka) as well.
It was in these conditions that the No. 18 UPGARAGE BANDOH 86 (Yamada) running in 8th position crashed on the last turn of lap 71, badly damaging the front of the car. The driver was quickly able to leave the car, but since the tire barrier had been damaged, the Red Flag came out to stop the race for safety reasons. The race was officially ended with six laps remaining. According to the regulation, the final finishing order was decided by the running order on the lap prior to the Red Flag.

With this, the No. 31 TOYOTA PRIUS apr GT got its first win of the season. The other two spots on the podium went to the No .25 VivaC 86 MC and No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT in 2nd and 3rd respectively. Finishing 4th was the No. 11 GAINER TANAX AMG GT3, which had finally worked up to near the tail of car No. 61. The winner of the last round, the No. 3 B-MAX NDDP GT-R (Kazuki Hoshino to Jann Mardenborough) managed to finish 5th after a strong race, having worked up from a 21st position start.

 

 

 

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