2024.11.03

Rd. 8 Race GT500: Last season’s Champions, the au TOM'S GR Supra, win for the second time this season! Favorites now for a second straight title

　The MOTEGI GT 300km RACE, Round 8 of the 2024 AUTOBACS SUPER GT Series, took place on November 3rd (Sun.) at Mobility Resort Motegi (4,801m x 63 laps) in Tochigi Prefecture. In the GT500 class, the No. 36 au TOM'S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Kenta Yamashita) took its second win of the season to bring it a step away from winning the series title. In the GT300 class, the No. 88 VENTENY Lamborghini GT3 (Takashi Kogure/Yuya Motojima) put on a magnificent charge to come from a 17th-place grid start to take its second win in a row. These two cars were also the winners of last year’s race at Motegi. The next round that will decide the season champions will be the Round 5 race at SUZUKA that was postponed from September and has been rescheduled to be held on December 7th and 8th.

 

 

 

 

 

　In this Round 8 at MOTEGI, originally scheduled as the last round of the season, the Success Weight regulation would not have been applied (unless the car had not participated in all eight rounds of the series). However, this season, the Round 5 race that was scheduled to run in September at SUZUKA had to be postponed and re-scheduled for the 7th and 8th of December, thus the Motegi race became the 7th race of the season and therefore the participating cars had to run with their allotted Success Weight loads of 1 kg / series point.

　In contrast to qualifying day (Sat.), with its rain and difficult track conditions, this race day was blessed with blue skies, with the air temperature above 20℃. The long-awaited race began at 1:00 in the afternoon with a formation lap with all of the GT machines running behind five motorcycles and five patrol cars of the Tochigi Prefectural Police in a Road Safety Awareness Parade Lap, after which the hot battles of the 63-lap race broke into action.

　Taking the lead at the start was the pole-sitting No. 64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Takuya Izawa/Riki Okusa). Following in 2nd position came the No. 8 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #8 (Tomoki Nojiri/Nobuharu Matsushita) that started from 2nd position on the grid and the No. 36 au TOM'S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Kenta Yamashita) that started from 3rd position, all maintaining their grid order through the opening lap.

　By the fifth lap of the race, No. 64 had established a 1.5 sec. lead over the pack, but on the sixth lap a GT300 class car came to a stop at trackside, which resulted in the first FCY (Full Course Yellow) of the day to be declared. This FCY was terminated on the seventh lap, at which time car No. 8 began closing in on the leader. After a fierce battle, No. 8 finally took the lead on the 5th corner of the 8th lap. But on the 9th lap an accident occurred in which the right rear wheel of a GT300 came off, resulting in the declaration of another FCY.

　The FCY was finally terminated on the 10th lap, but at that point the driver of car No. 8, Matsushita, was late in pushing the FCY button for a moment and continued to run slow. Not missing this opportunity, cars No. 64 and No. 36 took the lead coming out of the 90 Degrees Corner. Furthermore, on the 16th lap, the No. 38 KeePer CERUMO GR Supra (Hiroaki Ishiura/Toshiki Oyu) also got past No. 8 on the in-side of the 90 Degrees Corner to drop it into 4th position.

　On the 5th corner of the 11th lap, now in 2nd place, Tsuboi in car No. 36, was quick to catch car No. 64 and take over the lead, despite carrying 53 kg of Success Weight. From there he rapidly increased his lead over the pack, initially to a 6.2 sec. margin by the 15th lap, and then to a 10.1 sec. margin by the 20th lap. On the 17th lap, after moving into 3rd position, car No. 38 also caught and passed No. 64 to move into 2nd position. But from there it was unable to close the gap on No. 36. Not only that, after catching car No. 64 on the 21st lap, No. 8 passed it to reclaim 3rd position and went on to close in on the tail of No. 38

 

 

 

 

 

 

　Entering the 22nd lap, the GT500 class cars began returning for their pit stops one after another. Car No. 38 running in 2nd position and car No. 8 running in 3rd position made their pit stops on the 22nd lap. Having dropped to 4th position, car No. 64 made its stop on the 23rd lap. As for the leading car No. 36, it returned to the pit on the 24th lap. There, it changed drivers from Tsuboi to Kenta Yamashita and was able to return to the race with a 10 sec. margin of lead.

　Now driving car No. 36 for the second half of the race, Yamashita began running laps in the 1’41 to 42 sec. range, thus expanding his lead at a fast pace. By the 35th lap, he had established a more than 17 sec. lead over 2nd place, after which he slowed slightly to a steady pace of 1’43 to 44 sec. per lap, and in the end, he completed the 63rd and final lap of the race with a big 20.5 sec. lead over 2nd place. This gave the team its second win of the season, following the one in the opening round at Okayama.

　Behind this, after dropping at one point to 4th position, car No. 8 driven now by Tomoki Nojiri closed in on car No. 38 and passed it on the 3rd corner of the 53rd lap to move into 2nd place before taking the checkered flag.

　In the final stages, No. 38, now driven by Toshiki Oyu had to fight off a strong attack by Sato in the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #16 (Hiroki Otsu/Ren Sato), but Oyu was able to consistently block the lines the young Sato tried to overtake him with and went on to successfully finish the race in 3rd place. Meanwhile, the car No. 64 that had started the race from pole position was unable to keep a fast pace in the latter stages and fell back dramatically to 10th place at the finish.

　Also, among the Nissan Z NISMO GT500 cars, which had finished near the bottom in the qualifying, the No. 3 Niterra MOTUL Z (Mitsunori Takaboshi/Atsushi Miyake) that had started the race from 11th position on the grid succeeded in climbing through the fierce competition in the middle group to finish the race in 7th place, followed by the No. 24 REALIZE CORPORATION ADVAN Z (Tsugio Matsuda/Teppei Natori) in 8th place and the No. 23 MOTUL AUTECH Z (Katsumasa Chiyo/Ronnie Quintarelli) in 9th place, all three able to finish in the points range.

　With these results, the leader in the 2024 Drivers point standings, the No. 36 pair of Tsuboi and Yamashita expanded their lead to 73 points. Meanwhile, by finishing 6th in this race, the No. 100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT pair of Naoki Yamamoto and Tadasuke Makino took 2nd position in the standings with 56 points, while the No. 38 pair of Ishiura and Oyu that finished 3rd in this race rose to 3rd place in the standings with 52 points. Furthermore, the No. 37 Deloitte TOM'S GR Supra pair of Ukyo Sasahara and Giuliano Alesi that finished out of the points this time due to machine trouble still managed to secure a small chance of competing as one of the four teams that will try for the 2024 GT500 class Drivers title in the Round 5 at SUZUKA that was initially postponed and re-scheduled to be held on December 7th and 8th as the final round.

 

 

 

 

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