On September 13 (Sat.), the qualifying for the 49th SUZUKA 1000km race, Round 4 of the 2025 Intercontinental GT Challenge was held at Suzuka Circuit in Mie Prefecture. From SUPER GT, the GOODSMILE RACING & Team UKYO team entered the GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG and finish the Qualifying in 24th position.

For SUPER GT, Article 10 of the SUPER GT Sporting Regulations specifies that, “Cars participating in SUPER GT are prohibited from participating in any other race series without specific approval from GTA.” And although it is as such prohibited for a SUPER GT car to be used as it is in another race series, in November of 2024, an agreement was reached between GTA and the organizer of the SUZUKA 1000km, the SRO Motortsport Group, to enable a GT300 class car to participate in this race.

Under this agreement, an application for participation was filed and approval for the GOODSMILE RACING & Team UKYO team to participate in the SUZUKA 1000km was announced in a bulletin released by GTA some time ago. Participating as drivers for the team were the regular SUPER GT driver pair of Nobuteru Taniguchi and Tatsuya Kataoka, with Kamui Kobayashi as the third driver. As for the car’s coloring (livery), on top of the car’s existing SUPER GT coloring were added a special wrapping just for this race.

The race week started from runs on September 12th (Fri.), including the Paｙed Practices and the Night Practice, but due to difficult conditions with rain falling off and on, the GOODSMILE RACING team suffered some difficulties. In the Paｙed Practices session 1. the team finished in 26th position overall with a best time of 2’03.487. In the Paｙed Practices session 2. it finished in 16th position overall with a best time of 2’03.965, and in the Night Practice the team ended the day in 27th position overall with a time of 2’03.919.

On the night of the 12th (Fri.), the unstable weather conditions continued, with a warning of the possibility of heavy rain, and at 10:45 in the morning of the September 13th (Sat.) the Pre Qualifying session was held. Although rain fell partway through the session, the GOODSMILE RACING team recorded a best time for the session of 2’03.185 to finish in 28th position overall.

However, in the afternoon session which began at 5:05 and was competed on the basis of the average best time of each team’s three drivers, due to factors such as a Red Flag shown part way through the session and the amount of traffic on the track that made conditions difficult, the GOODSMILE RACING team began with driver Nobuteru Taniguchi recording a time of 2’02.897 in the Qualify 1 session. In the Qualify 2 session, Tatsuya Kataoka recorded a time of 2’02.118, and in Qualify 3 session Kamui Kobayashi ran a time of 2’01.361, which gave the three drivers a fast average best time that put them in 14th position. However. due in part to time deletions due to failure to decelerate during the Red Flag period, the team’s final result was 24th overall.

From 12:50 in the afternoon on September 14th (Sun.) the 1000km race (6 hr. 30 min.) is to be held.

Nobuteru Taniguchi：
“Although we had a lot of hard time from the first day, in the qualifying we worked hard and were able to make use of the good qualities of the tires to take 14th position (provisional classification). However, because of factors such as other teams being penalized for Red Flag period violations, etc., our actual position may have been a bit lower. To begin with, if we had been able to compete with our car in its usual condition we would be able to go into tomorrow’s race with more confidence, but I feel that we are suffering from the effects of the difficulties we had on Friday. Now we have to decide what we are going to do to prepare for tomorrow, so I want to see us do the best with what we have at this point.”

Tatsuya Kataoka：
“At this point it looks as if we can expect to have some trouble with the race pace. However, from here we hope to be able to take the car up to a higher level of performance, and that is what I am looking forward to. That said, however, there will not be an opportunity for any warm-up time. But, even if it ends up that the competition is tough, another important mission we have is to complete this race without damaging the present performance of the car, since we have the sixth round of the SUPER GT series coming up next week at Sportsland SUGO. Of course, since I’m sure there will be a lot of people cheering us on, so I want to see us give it a good fight to the end with a tough competitive spirit.”

＞ Qualifying Results （PDF）