2024.03.23

【Official Tests Fuji – Day 1 Qualifying Simulation pole position goes to ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #16! GT300 class top is the No. 88 Lamborghini

Official Tests at Fuji Speedway March 23 (Sat.) 　Session 2

On March 23, the first day of the SUPER GT Official Tests at Fuji Speedway was held. The afternoon’s Session 2 was run as the second simulation of the new qualifying format, following the one held the week before at Okayama. Unfortunately, it had to be run in the rain, but considering that the system for determining the qualifying order for the GT300 class alone when run in the rain will now be changed, this session became a valuable opportunity to try out the new system.

 

 

 

 

 

　This Saturday afternoon Session 2 was run as a qualifying simulation, as it had been at the official tests in Okayama the previous weekend. According to the rules of the new qualifying format, the GT300 class Q1 is run in two groups, A and B, and based on the finishing order from Q1, the top eight cars from each group, a total of 16 cars, are to run as Group 1 (Upper 16) in Q2, while the cars finishing from 17th downward in each of the two groups are to run separately as Group 2 (Lower 17) in Q2. However, because of the wet conditions on the track surface this time, a WET Condition was officially declared. In such conditions, the regulation states that for the GT300 class, the top 16 finishers in Q1 would run together as the Q2 Group 1, while the cars finishing Q1 from 17th position downward would run as the Q2 Group 2 and the overall qualifying finishing order for 1st to 16th place would be decided by the times from the Q2 Group 1 and the qualifying places from 17th downward would be decided by the times for Q2 Group 1, without the “Combined Time” rule being applied.

　The qualifying began with the running of the GT300 class Q1 Group A session. This session was originally scheduled to be run by 13 cars, but due to a crash by the No. 45 PONOS FERRARI GT3 (Kei Cozzolino/Lilou Wadoux) in the morning session, it couldn’t compete in the qualifying simulation. The remaining 12 cars to run the session included the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi), No. 6 VELOREX FERRARI 296 GT3 (Roberto Merhi Muntan), No. 9 PACIFIC VSPO NAC AMG (Ryohei Sakaguchi), No. 18 UPGARAGE NSX GT3 (Yusuke Mitsui), No. 22 R'Qs AMG GT3 (Miki Koyama), No. 30 apr GR86 GT (Rikuto Kobayashi), No. 50 ANEST IWATA Racing RC F GT3 (Igor Omura Fraga), No. 56 REALIZE NISSAN MECHANIC CHALLENGE GT-R (Daiki Sasaki), No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Takuto Iguchi), No. 65 LEON PYRAMID AMG (Takuro Shinohara), No. 88 Lamborghini (Yuya Motojima), and the No. 360 RUNUP RIVAUX GT-R (Takuya Otaki).

　With the air temperature and the track surface temperature changed very little from those of the morning, but after starting to run, a number of machines would lose control when applying their brakes due to the increased amount of water on the track, As a result, car No. 65 was able to improve its lap time more quickly than its rivals to record a top time of 1’54.344. Next came car No. 88 with the second fastest time and car No. 6 with the third fastest.
　In order to compete for pole position in the Q2 Group 1 session, the teams would have to finish in the top eight. Eventually, the top time of car No. 65 remained unchanged. Filling out the top eight in Group 1 (Upper 16) were cars No. 88, No. 61, No. 6, No. 50, No. 18, No. 30, and No. 9. Finishing with a place in Group 2 （Lower 17） were cars No. 4, No. 360, No. 56, and No. 22.

　As for the Q1 Group B, the competing cars here were the No. 2 muta Racing GR86 GT (Yuui Tsutsumi), No. 5 MACHSYAKEN AIR BUSTER MC86 MACH GO (Kiyoto Fujinami), No. 7 Studie BMW M4 (Bruno Spengler), No. 20 SHADE RACING GR86 GT (Katsuyuki Hiranaka), No. 25 HOPPY Schatz GR Supra GT (Togo Suganami), No. 31 apr LC500h GT (Jin Nakamura), No. 48 Datsumou K's Frontier GO&FUN NEKONEKO GT-R (Taiyo Ida), No. 52 Green Brave GR Supra GT (Seita Nonaka), No. 60 Syntium LMcorsa GR Supra GT (Hiroki Yoshimoto), No. 62 HELM MOTORSPORTS GT-R (Yuya Hiraki), No. 87 Lamborghini (Natsu Sakaguchi), No. 96 K-tunes RC F GT3 (Morio Nitta), and the No. 777 D'station Vantage GT3 (Marco Sorensen).

　Among these 13 cars, it was No. 31’s rookie Nakamura who first brought his time down to a 1’48.117 lap. This was a full 4 sec. faster than the 2nd-place time of car No. 96, which gave No. 31 the top time of Q2 Group 1 (Upper16). Filling out the top eight positions from 3rd place downward came cars No. 52, No. 87, No. 777, No. 2, No. 7, and No. 25.
　Finishing in 9th position was car No. 48. As for cars No. 5, No. 20, and No. 60, they decided not to run in light of the dangerous track surface conditions. Car No. 62 had gone out on the track once but soon returned to the pit without recording a valid lap time, which meant that these five cars became the Q2 Group 2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

　Despite the Wet Condition declaration, as usual, all of the GT500 class cars would run in Q1 and Q2, and the final order would be determined by the combined-time format.
　As Q1 was about to start, the rain grew lighter, and the track surface and visibility conditions improved. The top times were contested in the 1’37 sec. range, and the final stages evolved into a fierce contest between the No. 12 MARELLI IMPUL Z (Kazuki Hiramine), the No. 36 au TOM'S GR Supra (Kenta Yamashita), and the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Hiroki Otsu), with the order changing time and again.
　On the final lap, all three improved on their best lap times, starting with car No. 23 MOTUL AUTECH Z (Katsumasa Chiyo) taking the lead, and then car No. 12 moved into 2nd position. But, car No. 36 then moved up into 2nd position, and then car No. 16 beat No. 23’s time by 0.2 sec. to take the top position. In the end, the No. 39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD GR Supra (Yuichi Nakayama) moved up into 3rd position as the Q1 session came to an end. This gave the top three positions to cars No. 16, No. 23, and No. 39, while 4th and 5th positions went to cars No. 36 and No. 12 by a close margin of less than 0.1 sec. As for the No. 64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Takuya Izawa/Riki Okusa), it chose not to run in the session because of the track conditions and ended Q1 with no qualifying time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

　The GT300 class Q2 began with the session for Group 2 (Lower17). The battle for top time here went to car No. 56 (Joao Paulo de Oliveira) that recorded a time in the 1’47 sec. range and then went on in its next lap to score a best time of 1’47.069 to lead the session and claim what would be 17th position on the starting grid for the final race. Finishing in 2nd position was car No. 48 (Takumi Sanada) with a time of 1’47.478, followed by car No. 62 (Reiji Hiraki) in 3rd position. This top three was followed by car No. 360 (Takayuki Aoki), No. 4 (Nobuteru Taniguchi), and No. 22 (Hisashi Wada). As for cars No. 5, No. 20, No. 45, and No. 60, they all opted not to run in the session.

　Next, the Q2 Group 1 (Upper16) took to the track. The track condition had improved further by this time, and these changing conditions with each session are the reason the new qualifying format for the GT300 class that is competed in two separate groups, does not apply the combined-time format.
　First, it was car No. 61 (Hideki Yamauchi) that took the top spot with a time of 1’44.939, followed by car No. 18 (Takashi Kogure) by a margin of 0.5 sec. and then car No. 777 (Marco Sorensen) by another gap of 0.1 sec. Then car No. 88 ran a time of 1’44.924 to beat No. 61’s time by 15/1000ths of a second to take the lead. That time eventually gave No. 88 pole position. Among the Lamborghini teams, No. 87 (Kosuke Matsuura) finished in 5th position to show its speed as well. Meanwhile, Sorensen in car No. 777 also improved his time on the final lap to follow No. 61 in 3rd position. Filling out the top six were cars No. 18, No. 87, and No. 31 (Yuki Nemoto).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

　The final session of the qualifying was the GT500 class Q2. All 15 cars in the class, including car No. 64 (Riki Okusa) that had not run in Q1, would participate in this session. The weather had continued to improve, and patches of blue could now be seen between the clouds overhead.
　The battle for pole position was coming down to a pitched battle between cars No. 36 and No. 16. Car It was No. 3 (Atsushi Miyake) that had continued to hold the top position into the final stages of Q2, but it would be car No. 16 （Ren Sato） in 3rd position that would take the top spot due to the combined-time rule. However, it would be car No. 36 (Sho Tsuboi) that beat No. 3’s time to take the top spot in the session, but it would also be beaten by No. 16 coming from behind to take the top position due to the combined-time rule.

　Now it was car No. 16 that improved on its best time by 0.16 sec., and despite finishing in 3rd position succeeded in taking the lead away from No. 36 due to the combined-time rule. Having dropped to 2nd position, No. 36 succeeded in scoring the fastest time overall on the 2nd sector of the circuit and raising expectations for another come-from-behind drama, only to return to the pit road without crossing the control line. This gave pole position to car No. 16.
　Finishing the qualifying in 3rd position was the car No. 39 (driven by Sekiguchi in Q2) that had finished near the top in both Q1, where it took 3rd position, and in Q2, where it finished 4th. Car No. 3 finished in 4th position as the fastest of the Nissan cars.

 

 

 

 

 

　Since there were also aspects where we benefitted from the conditions (in the qualifying simulation), I don’t think that today’s results say everything. Tomorrow the weather will improve, and I believe the conditions will be different, so I will be thinking about the things that we need to improve. Still, because there haven’t been many times when the CIVIC TYPE R-GT has finished sessions on top, with regard to that, I feel that being able to finish today feeling good like this is something that I want to think of as a plus for us.

 

Ren Sato（No.16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #16）

　In terms of mastering this car, I think we have gradually been able to improve our times, and since we ended up with the top result, I believe it is a positive thing for the team. Since we should be able run on a dry track tomorrow, I think that the experience of running in the rain today was good. Today was the first time for me to be able to run at Fuji in the GT500 class, tomorrow I want to get used to running in dry conditions as fast as possible and to be able to respond quickly to the feedback from the machine.

 

 

　From this year our rain tires have a new (tread) pattern, and we used them for the first time at Okayama. This will be the second time, and I’ve gotten a much better feeling from them. It is certainly best to be able to get top times in any conditions, but since we don’t know what the conditions are for the others (rivals), we can’t let ourselves get overly confident. Tomorrow, I believe that we will be gathering new information (setting data). So, I want to get to know the car more completely.

 

Yuya Motojima（No. 88 Lamborghini*）

　The car’s feeling has been good all the time since Okayama. The Yokohama Rubber rain tires have a new pattern from this year, and we have learned that the rubber has good grip, but I wondered about the water shedding performance, which was also a concern. And there was a lot of water on the track at the time I was running, but there was no problem at all with the water shedding performance. However, car No. 31 (apr LC500h GT) was amazingly fast…. So, there is still a need to make the car faster.
*The team names for No. 88 and No. 87 will be announced at a later date.

 

 

 

　Until now, in the qualifying we had been able run on new tires (in Q1 and Q2), so the new style where both drivers have to run both sessions on the same set of tires makes it a bit disconcerting. But, I think the new system of competing on the basis of the combined times of the two drivers may be interesting. While my new partner is a GT500 rookie (Teppei Natori), since he has good adaptability, I am not worried. Because in training and such we have had many chances to run time attacks on the new tires. This is our first time running on Yokohama tires and my impression of them is not bad. However, we won’t really know until the air temperature and track surface temperature gets a little warmer.

 

Takayuki Aoki （No.360 RUNUP RIVAUX GT-R）

　To tell the truth, at this point my impression is that the new system is a bit difficult to understand. But I feel that the fact that all cars will run in Q2 is something that will be interesting for the spectators. Our team wasn’t able to advance to Q2 at all last year, but not running in Q2 didn’t mean that we couldn’t run in the race, and the basic work we have to do as a team in the qualifying hasn’t changed much. Most of all, the question is whether the people who watch SUPER GT are enjoying it; that is the most important thing.

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