GT500

The race started at 14:00. The skies were clear and the temperature 31 degrees C, with a track temperature of 43 degrees C, which was the hottest temperature recorded during the race weekend.

On the opening lap the pole starter, the No. 100 RAYBRIG NSX driven by Sebastien Philippe, took the lead and was followed through the first lap by the top five machines in their grid order. Behind them, the 6th position starter No. 1 ZENT CEERUMO SC (Toranosuke Takagi) and the 7th position starter No. 8 ARTA NSX (Ralph Firman) came back in the opposite order. On lap six, however, No. 8 ran off the track at the S curve. Although it quickly returned to the race, it had lost 6th place to No. 1. Meanwhile, the 5th position runner, No. 18 TAKATA DOME NSX (Ryo Michigami) passed the No.35 BANDAI DIREZZA SC430 (Peter Dumbreck) on the 90-Degree Corner of lap seven to move into 4th position. At the head of the competition, Philippe in car No. 100 had recorded the fastest lap of the race to that point on lap five with a 1 min. 47.577 sec. lap as he continued to widen the gap over the 2nd place runner No. 6 Mobil 1 SC driven by Akira Iida. After that, Iida in the No. 6 car failed to pick up the pace and close the gap, and on lap 14 he was finally passed by Andre Lotterer in the No. 36 OPEN INTERFECE TOM'S SC430. At this point there was a 10-second gap between the leader No. 100 and 2nd place runner No. 36. On lap 21, No. 100ran part way off the track on the hairpin turn but still managed to recover with a 4-sec. lead.

After the 21st lap the teams began to make their routine pit stops. Many of the cars were taking their pit stops earlier than usual, perhaps because of the unexpectedly high track temperature.
The leading car, No. 100, and the second-place car, No. 36, made their pit stops at the same time on the 30th lap. The race to finish the pit work was nearly even, with both cars leaving the pit at roughly the same time. With the position of the two leading machines unchanged, Shinya Hosokawa was now at the wheel of No. 100 while Juichi Wakisaka drove the No. 36 machine. By the time all the machines had finished their routine pit stops on lap 33, No. 100 had a 4-second lead over No. 36 in 2nd position. Following in 3rd position was No. 6, with No. 18 in 4th, No. 35 in 5th and No. 1 in 6th position. Before long, No. 1 passed No. 35 to move into 5th position.

Entering the final stages of the race, Wakisaka in the No. 36 machine was unable to make his typical catch-up pursuit as Hosokawa held his pace and gradually opened an even larger gap. By the 40th lap that gap had grown to six seconds and by lap 50 it was 10 seconds.
The battle for 3rd and below began to heat up with ten laps remaining in the race. First of all, in 3rd position the No. 6 machine driven by Kataoka began to fall off the pace rapidly to the point where his lap times were a full three seconds slower than his competitors. Soon after this, Kogure in the No. 18 machine caught up with him, but because the No. 6 machine was faster on the straights, he was having a hard time getting past. During this interval, Tachikawa in the No. 1 machine also caught up and was able to slip past No. 18 coming out of the hairpin on lap 57. At that moment Kataoka in No. 6 also gave Tachikawa room to pass, which moved No. 1 up to 3rd position in one move. After that, No .6 picked up its pace enough to stay ahead of No. 18.

With 63 laps finished, the leaders entered the checkered lap. Hosokawa in the No. 100 RAYBRIG NSX ran without mishap to take the checkered and the win with a 17-second lead over 2nd place. This was the first victory of the season for No. 100. It was also the team's second consecutive win at the Motegi round. This give the NSX teams their 6th straight victory at their home course, Motegi. For Hosokawa, this was his first GT500 victory ever. Second place went to No. 36 OPEN INTERFACE TOM'S SC430 and 3rd place to No. 1 ZENT CERUMO SC. In 6th place came the No. 24 WOODONE ADVAN KONDO Z6 (Masataka Yanagida, Seiji Ara), which had passed the No. 32 EPSON NSX in the closing laps to be the first finisher among the Fairlady Z teams.
This result put Philippe and Hosokawa on top of the drivers ranking in a tie with the No. 36 team drivers Juichi Wakisaka and Andre Lotterer. Three points behind in a tie for 3rd lie the No. 1 team drivers Tachikawa and Takagi and the No. 22 team driver Michael Krumm, who finished 10th in this race. As for the No. 8 team drivers Ito and Firman, they scored no points this time because they were unable to finish the race due to wheel nut coming off. This dropped then to 5th place in the ranking.

GT300

JIM CENTER FERRARI DUNLOP grabs season's first win in GT300 class

In the GT300 class, the pole starter Haruki Kurosawa in the No.62 WILLCOM ADVAN VEMAC 408R was passed by Tetsuya Tanaka in the No. 11 JIM CENTER FERRARI DUNLOP machine on lap 13. After that No. 62's paced slowed and on lap 19 Kurosawa was passed by Hideshi Matsuda in the No.110 TOTALBENEFIT GREENTEC BOXSTER. Two laps later the No. 62 made a pit stop and changed drivers to Shinsuke Shibahara.

The leader, No. 11, made its pit stop on lap 30 and 2nd-place runner, No. 110, made its pit stop on lap 33, with these teams changing drivers to Takayuki Aoki and Ichijo Suga respectively. Thanks to faster pit work, No. 110 was able to return to the track in front of No. 11 but lost that lead with a costly mistake at the hairpin on lap 35 that sent it off the track. This caused No. 110 to lose considerable ground and drop back in the pack. Meanwhile, No. 11 was passed momentarily by No. 13 ENDLESS ADVAN CCI Z (Masami Kageyama >Tomonobu Fujii), which had been working up steadily from its 15th position grid start, but on lap 33 No. 11 was able to pass No. 13 back to regain the lead by the time all the machines had finished their pit stops.
At this point the order of the top three machines was No. 11 in the lead followed by No. 13 and No.62. After this, all three machines held their positions all the way to the checkered.

This gave the No.11 FERRARI Tetsuya Tanaka, Takayuki Aoki) the win, with 2nd place going to the No.13 Z (Masami Kageyama, Tomonobu Fujii) and tied these two teams at 6th place in the drivers ranking. The 3rd-place finish by No.62 VEMAC moved driver Shinsuke Shibahara up from 8th to 4th in the ranking. Meanwhile, the ranking leaders up to this round, Shogo Mitsuyama and Nobuteru Taniguchi (No.61 R&D ADVAN VEMAC 320R) were able to hold on to their lead in the ranking by finishing 6th in this round.

Comments

GT500 Class Winner

No.100 RAYBRIG NSX

Sebastien Philippe

It has been the greatest weekend. The car's condition was good the whole time. I am grateful to everyone on the team. We owe this second consecutive Motegi victory to Honda and the fans who have cheered us on. I really want to thank everyone. This means that we will be carrying handicap weights at Autopolis, but that is a track where we have had very good test results. So, I want to try to win as many points as possible there.

Shinya Hosokawa

The machine was perfect. I knew that if I didn't make any mistakes and ran the machine at 100% of its potential we would win the race. I am very glad because that is exactly what happened.

GT300 Class Winner

No.11 JIM CENTER FERARRI DUNLOP

Tetsuya Tanaka

This is fantastic! Also, this is our first victory since Aoki and I have been driving together. It's the first time we have won on a dry track since changing to this machine, and that is something that makes us even gladder. It will be difficult to win the series title from the way things stand now, but you never know what will happen in the last two rounds. So, we won't give up hope and I'll keep driving hard.

Takayuki Aoki

I won here last year (driving a different machine) in a runaway victory. But this time there was some trouble from the qualifying stage, so I am very happy that we were able to win.