The Official Qualifying for the 2026 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series opening round, the “OKAYAMA GT 300km RACE” took place on April 11th at OKAYAMA INTERNATIONAL CIRCUIT (1lap 3,703m) in Okayama prefecture. As with last season, the Qualifying was run in a knock-out format. In the GT500 class, pole position went to the No. 38 KeePer CERUMO GR Supra (Toshiki Oyu / Rikuto Kobayashi) thanks to the fine performance of Oyu in Q2. In the GT300 class Qualifying, it was Fujii in the No.777 D’station Vantage GT3 (Tomonobu Fujii / Charlie Fagg) who recorded the fastest time. These two teams will start the race from the front of their respective grids in the Race held on April 12th.
□The official Qualifying Ｗeather: Q1/Q2: clear | Track: dry | Air temperature/Track temperature GT300 Q1 at the start: 25℃/34℃, Q1 at the end: 25℃/37℃, GT300 Q2 at the start: 25℃/37℃, Q2at the end: 25℃/36℃.
On April 11th (Saturday), the Qualifying for the 2026 season SUPER GT series opening round was held. The stage for this opening round was the Okayama International Circuit in Okayama prefecture. From morning the skies over the circuit were clear and the air temperature was warm, as if it were early summer. The official Qualifying Q1 session for the GT300 class saw the Group A session start at 2:00 in the afternoon.
The GT300 class Group A was competed by 15 cars. From the 4th or 5th lap on the track the cars began recording timed laps one after another, and it was the No. 31 apr LC500h GT (Miki Koyama) that was first to record a timed lap of 1’25.791. This was then beaten by the No. 777 D’station Vantage GT3 (Charlie Fagg) with a lap of 1’25.431.
In the end, it was the No. 777 Vantage car’s time of 1’25.431 that was fastest in Group A. Following in 2nd position was the No. 31 LC500h, while 3rd to 5th positions went to the No. 96 K-tunes RC F GT3 (Morio Nitta), the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi), and the No. 9 PACIFIC UMA MUSUME NAC BMW (Yusuke Tomibayashi). Meanwhile, the No. 666 seven x seven PORSCHE GT3R EVO (Kiyoto Fujinami) and the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Takuto Iguchi) that entered with a new engine failed to progress to Q2.
In the GT300 class Q1 Group B was competed by 14 cars. With 4 minutes remaining in the session, the No. 20 SHADE RACING RC F GT3 (Eijiro Shimizu) developed machine trouble in the HOBBS CORNER and came to a stop on the track. The Red Flag was shown to stop the session until the car could be recovered.
After this, the Q1 Group B session was restarted with six minutes remaining, and then the Group B cars, with the exception of No. 20, began to resume their time attacks. In the final stages of the session, it was the No. 60 Syntium LMcorsa LC500 GT (Shunsuke Kohno) that improved to a best time of 1’25.576 to move to the top in Q2. Following in 2nd to 5th positions came the No. 30 apr GR86 GT (Hibiki Taira), the No. 52 Green Brave GR Supra GT (Seita Nonaka), No. 11 GAINER TANAX Z (Kazuki Oki) and the No. 2 HYPER WATER INGING GR86 GT (Kazuhisa Urabe), all of which were GT300 specification cars.
In the GT300 class Q2 session, after two Red Flag stoppages in the GT300 Q1 Group B session and the GT500 class Q1 session, the session was finally restarted at 3:14 in the afternoon. As the cars resumed their time attacks, the No. 31 apr LC500h GT (Kazuto Kotaka) recorded times in the 1’24 range, etc., as the leading cars improved on their times one after another.
Among these, it was the No. 777 D’station Vantage GT3 (Tomonobu Fujii) that recorded a time of 1’24.561. With this, the No. 777 D’station Vantage GT3 (Tomonobu Fujii / Charlie Fagg) won pole position for opening round at Okayama. For Fujii it was his third pole position.
In 2nd position came the No. 2 HYPER WATER INGING GR86 GT (Yuui Tsutsumi / Kazuhisa Urabe). Originally the holder of the 2nd fastest time of 1’24.725 had been Kotaka of the No. 31 apr LC500h GT, but that time was disqualified when it was found that it was a time recorded in a lap when he ran at one point with all four wheels off the track. Nonetheless, the No. 31 LC500h took 3rd position with its second-best time of 1’25.228 to end up in 3rd position. In 4th and 5th positions came the No. 6 UNI-ROBO BLUEGRASS FERRARI (Yoshiaki Katayama / Niklas Kruetten) and the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi / Tatsuya Kataoka).
