NICOS Cup GT Allstar
15 Nov. '97
Qualify Report

This year marks the second year for the GT All-Star Race. The entry list for the race is determined by spectator vote, meaning that only the most popular teams among the competitors gain the honor to participate. One exception is that if the winners of the championship are not voted in, they alone hold the option of deciding whether to join in or not.

Provisional qualifying results came from the Saturday session, and 10 cars (seven GT500s and three GT300s) were selected to run in the "Top Qualify" Session on Sunday morning to decide the starting grid. The Skyline GT-R driven by Erik Comas dominated the day on the oval track, claiming the fastest lap in both free practice sessions in the morning as well as the afternoon qualifying session. Commenting after the qualifying session, Comas stated, "It was a close fight. There was a three-second difference over the second car in the first practice session, but the gap fell to less than two-tenths of a second in qualifying. My car ran well. Quick and very consistent. I hope to get the pole position and win, just as we did in the opening race."

The two Toyota Supras of Katsutomo Kaneishi (No.38) and Toshio Suzuki (No.37), who made their time attack as a pair, marked times only slightly off that of No. 2 GT-R of Comas. The fastest Honda NSX was the No.18 car belonging to the Mugen+Dome Project. Driven by Takuya Kurosawa, the car was fourth in the standings followed by No. 100 NSX driven by Akira Iida.


In the GT300 class, a Porsche 993RSR driven by Hideyuki Tamamoto took provisional pole, while second fastest in the class went to the Ferrari F355 of Tetsuya Ohta and Anders Olofsson. Olofsson was behind the wheel for the team's fastest lap.