2008 SUPER GT Round2

Weather:Cloudy with occasional rain | Course:dry to wet | Air Temp. 18°C | track surface Temp. 25°C

The race started at 14:00. The sky had remained cloudy since morning, but shortly before the start a cold wind began to blow and it began to feel like rain was approaching.


After the formation lap the race began with the pole sitter, No. 23 XANAVI NISMO GT-R driven Benoit Treluyer, in the lead. The cars went through the first lap in the same order as their qualifying positions.
Through the early stages of the race the order changed little, but after lap 10 the No. 22 MOTUL AUTECH GT-R (Masataka Yanagida) began to fall off the pace and a line formed behind him from 6th position down. On the first corner of lap 13 No. 100 RAYBRIG NSX (Yuji Ide) managed to slip through the inside and move past No.22.
Meanwhile the No. 1 ARTA NSX (Ralph Firman) was moving up on the leader, No. 23. Finally, on the straight of lap 21, Firman pulled up along side No. 23 and the two machines went pat the control line side-by-side. Because No. 1’s nose was slightly ahead as they crossed the line, No.1 was credited with leading this lap. But No. 23 went into the first corner in the lead and after that the gap began to widen again as the two machines began to meet and lap the slower competitors at different times.
Around this time light rain began to fall, and although it wasn’t enough to really wet the track, the overall lap times began to slow. No. 22 showed an especially big slowing in lap times, and in the hairpin of lap 26 it was passed by the No. 36 PETRONAS TOM'S SC430 (Andre Lotterer), the No. 32 EPSON NSX (Loic Duval) and the No. 17 REAL NSX (Toshihiro Kaneishi) all at once.

No.12 CALSONIC IMPUL GT-R Later, on lap 31, the No. 38 ZENT CERUMO SC430 (Richard Lyons) hit the tail of the No. 3 YellowHat YMS TOMICA GT-R (Naoki Yokomizo) coming out of the Attwood Curve, sending No. 3 into a spin. This also caused the No. 6 ENEOS SC430 (Daisuke Ito) and No. 22 to hit each other as they tried to avoid the spinning-out No. 3. The judges gave No. 38 a drive-through penalty for this, while No. 22 and No. 6 also suffered big losses in position.
On lap 32, No. 23 lightly brushed a GT300 machine while trying to pass two back-lappers at once. While attempting to slip past the machines involved in this incident, No. 1and the No. 11 JIM CENTER DIXCEL ADVAN F430 (Tetsuya Tanaka) also hit each other, causing damage to No. 1’s front fender. No.1 made its pit stop at this point. After hastened fender repairs and the regular pit work, No. 1 returned to the race with second driver Takuya Izawa at the wheel. But a big gap had opened up by this point between No. 1 and the leader, No. 23.
No. 23 made its pit stop at the end of lap 40, with Satoshi Motoyama taking over at the wheel. After lap 50, when all the machines had finished their pit stops, the order of the top three had returned to No. 23 (Motoyama) in 1st, followed by No. 1 (Izawa) and the No. 12 CALSONIC IMPUL GT-R (Sebastien Philippe > Tsugio Matsuda). Of these three, No. 23 was running at the slowest pace and the gap between them began to lessen gradually as a result.
With the leader now in view, Izawa in machine No. 1 made a half spin at the Double hairpin of lap 68. Although he recovered quickly, No. 12 was able to slip past him. It seemed that the effects of the previous collision remained in the machine.
This put the two GT-R machines, No. 23 and No. 12, in a 1-2 lead. There were no changes after that in the positions of the top three, and they took the checkered in that order at the end of lap 82.

No.1 ARTA NSX The win went to the No. 23 XANAVI NISMO GT-R (Satoshi Motoyama/Benoit Treluyer). Despite carrying 100 kg in handicap weights from their win in Round One, the No. 23 team achieved an amazing pole-to finish victory, while picking up the fastest lap of the race in the process. This made them only the third team in the history of the SUPER GT/JGTC series to win consecutive victories. The last team to do so was the No. 23 Skyline GT-R in 1998, when it won the 1st and 3rd races of the season, with 2nd race having been cancelled due to bad weather.
The highest finisher among the SC430 machines was the No. 36 PETRONAS TOM'S SC430 (Juichi Wakisaka/Andre Lotterer) in 4th place. Although they missed a pole position, the team did well considering their position in the qualifying, and at one point Wakisaka showed their prowess by battling past the No. 32 EPSON NSX (Katsuyuki Hiranaka).

In the GT300 class, the top four machines came through the opening lap in their qualifying order with the No. 43 ARTA Garaiya (Morio Nitta) in the lead. Behind them, the No. 26 YUNKER POWER TAISAN PORSCHE (Nobuteru Taniguchi) had moved up from eighth position on the grid into 5th position. Also, the No. 77 CUSCO DUNLOP SUBARU IMPREZA (Kota Sasaki) was moving up through the pack, passing about one machine per lap. By lap four, Sasaki had moved up behind No. 26 to stand in 6th position.

No.26 YUNKER POWER TAISAN PORSCHE
At the end of lap 10, the four machines from 3rd position to No. 77 in 6th position had moved up on the tail of the No. 46 MOLA LEOPALACE Z (Kazuki Hoshino) running in 2nd place. On lap 15, No. 77 moved past No. 26 briefly, but No. 26’s superior speed on the straights enabled it recover its position. Taniguchi in No. 26 passed the No. 81 DAISHIN ADVAN Z (Takayuki Aoki) on lap 17. On the next lap he also passed the No. 11 JIM CENTER DIXCEL ADVAN F430 (Tetsuya Tanaka), and one lap later he passed No. 46 to move into 2nd position. Sasaki in No. 77 had moved into 3rd place on lap 23. With this, the top three order was No. 43 (Nitta), No. 26 (Taniguchi) and No. 77 (Sasaki).
Among these three, No. 43 was losing tire grip and was eventually passed by No. 26 on lap 32 to sit in 2nd position. On the next lap Nitta had to make an early pit stop to change tires, refuel and turn over the wheel to teammate Shinichi Takagi. Fast pit work got Takagi back on the track in just 29 seconds. No. 26 made its pit stop on lap 37. But with its poorer fuel economy, the Porsche took more than 50 seconds to refuel and get back on the track. When No. 26 got back on the track with Shinichi Yamaji at the wheel No. 43 had a big lead.
Having assumed the lead while the two leaders made their pit stops, No. 77 finally made its own pit stop on lap 46. The pit work and driver change took 45 seconds, and when No. 77 returned to the track with Tetsuya Yamano at the wheel, it was behind No. 43 and No. 26 in 3rd position. And, on the first lap out of the pit, Yamano was passed by No. 46 (Hironobu Yasuda).

No.77 CUSCO DUNLOP SUBARU IMPREZA
When all the teams had finished their pit stops and the race settled into the second half, the order of the top three was No. 43 in the lead, followed by No. 26 and No. 46. There was a considerable margin between each of these three machines, but No. 77 had closed in on No. 46 again and eventually battled past it on lap 57. This put the top three back in the order they had stood in before their pit stops. And from this point on there was no change in the order of the top three before they took the checkered. The victory went to the No. 43 ARTA Garaiya, in its first victory with the new chassis.
Finishing 2nd was the No. 26 YUNKER POWER TAISAN PORSCHE (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Shinichi Yamaji), with its second consecutive podium finish after a 3rd place in the opening round. Third place went to the No. 77 CUSCO DUNLOP SUBARU IMPREZA (Tetsuya Yamano/Kota Sasaki). Since switching to the AWD machine, the No. 77 team had struggled with machine reliability, but this result proved the fruits of their efforts.