The opening round of the 2025 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series, the OKAYAMA GT 300km RACE, took place on April 13th at the Okayama International Circuit (one lap 3,703m × 82 laps). Unlike the previous day’s qualifying in fine weather conditions, rain fell this day from morning until part way through the race, after which the rain stopped and the track began to dry, making for difficult changing conditions. In such conditions, the 2024 GT500 champions, the No. 1 au TOM’S GR Supra（Sho Tsuboi/Kenta Yamashita）came from 2nd position on the starting grid to execute a magnificent come-from-behind win to start it on the way to a third consecutive championship. In the GT300 class, the No. 65 LEON PYRAMID AMG（Naoya Gamou/Togo Suganami）started from 4th position on the grid to win the race with a show of speed in both the rainy first half and the dry conditions of the second half.

There were upsets even before the start of the 2025 season opening round. The rain falling from the night before had lightened somewhat in the morning, but it grew stronger again from around 10:00 in the morning, and the track condition was completely wet at the time of the warm-up runs starting from 11:40 in the morning. Before the start of the race, the Okayama Prefectural Police patrol car traffic safety awareness activities parade run scheduled for 1:10 in the afternoon unfortunately had to be cancelled, and the race started with the Safety Car controlling the pace.

The Safety Car returned to the pit area after the 4th lap. Just after passing was finally allowed from the 5th lap, the No. 38 KeePer CERUMO GR Supra (Hiroaki Ishiura/Toshiki Oyu) spun out when exiting the first turn. What’s more, it was hit by the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #16 (Hiroki Otsu/Ren Sato) coming up from behind and the two machines suffered damage and came to a stop. While trying to avoid this accident, the No. 12 TRS IMPUL with SDG Z (Kazuki Hiramine/Bertrand Baguette) also ran off the track. This brought out the Safety Car and the Red Flag was shown to bring the race to a stop.

The race was restarted with the Safety Car leading it at 1:55 in the afternoon, and from the 11th lap passing was finally allowed. Soon after this, Tsuboi in the No. 1 au TOM’S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Kenta Yamashita) that had started from 2nd position on the grid succeeded in passing Fukuzumi in the pole-starting No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra (Kazuya Oshima/Nirei Fukuzumi) at the double hairpin curve to move into the lead.

At the first curve of the 14th lap of the race, it was now the No. 3 Niterra MOTUL Z (Daiki Sasaki/Atsushi Miyake) that spun out and ran off the track. When the car got stuck in the gravel, the Safety Car was brought out again for the third time. The race was effectively restarted after this on the 19th lap.

Behind car No. 1 running strongly in the lead, the No. 37 Deloitte TOM’S GR Supra (Ukyo Sasahara/Giuliano Alesi) that had started in 14th position and, with the middle group falling behind, and with the aggressive passing executed by the driver Sasahara moving it up in the field, it finally caught and passed the No. 100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino) at the Double Hairpin curve on the 32th lap to move into 3rd position in the race. After that, car No. 100 was also passed by the No. 17 Astemo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi/Syun Koide) and returned to the pit on the 33rd lap. With this, the other cars in the GT500 class began to return to their pits one after another to change drivers and refuel.

At this point in the race, the track was still wet enough that wet-use tires were necessary, but from here on, the weather improved, and the track began to gradually dry out. The car No. 14 running in 2nd position made its pit stop on the 51st lap, followed by the leading car No. 1 on the 52nd lap, where both refueled and changed drivers, and rather than changing to dry-use tires, both returned to the race after changing tires from wet-use to wet-use.

However, 3 laps later, on the 55th lap, car No. 100 made its second pit stop. Here it returned to the race after changing to dry-use tires, and on the 60th lap ran the fastest lap of the race in the 1’24 sec. range compared to the best times run by the leaders on wet-use tires. Seeing this, the two cars running in the lead also decided to change tires as well, with No. 14 making the change on the 62nd lap and No. 1 also returning to its pit on the 64th lap to make the change.

After that, at the Attwood Curve on the 66th lap, the No. 19 WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra (Yuji Kunimoto/Sena Sakaguchi) ran off the track. Because this accident brought it to a stop in the gravel, the Safety Car came out for the 4th time in the race. With this, Yamashita in car No. 1 would lose the 10-sec. lead he had built up over car No. 14.

Nonetheless, when the race was restarted, the second stint driver, Yamashita, in car No. 1 began to open up a lead again over 2nd place and the rest of the field. Meanwhile, passing car No. 14 to move into 2nd position came car No. 37.

Car No. 37 would go on from there to finish the race in 2nd place. However, a 10-sec. penalty was given to No. 37 for hitting car No. 64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Takuya Izawa/Riki Okusa) and causing to run off the track. The resulting calculation of the penalty after the goal dropped No. 37 to 6th position in the race.

While these upsets were taking place behind it, the consecutive championship-holding car, the No. 1 au TOM’S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Kenta Yamashita) would again widen its lead over the field to 2.859 sec. by the time it took the checkered flag and the win at the end of the 82-lap race, for a magnificent come-from-behind victory. This gave the TGR TEAM au TOM’S its third consecutive win counting from last season’s Rd. 8 at MOTEGI and Rd. 5 at SUZUKA. This also gave the team its second straight victory at OKAYAMA after last year’s win.

Finishing the race in 2nd place was the No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra (Kazuya Oshima/Nirei Fukuzumi). Due to the post-race time penalty given to the 3rd position car No. 37, 3rd place in the race went to the No. 39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD GR Supra (Yuhi Sekiguchi/Sacha Fenestraz) that had finished the race in 4th position. This meant that despite the penalty to No. 37, all three spots on the podium went to TOYOTA GR Supra GT500 cars.

As for the Honda CIVIC TYPE R-GT cars, the No. 100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino) that had been first to change to slick tires finished in 4th place after a blistering push to the front. Among the Nissan Z NISMO GT500 cars, the No. 23 MOTUL AUTECH Z (Katsumasa Chiyo/Mitsunori Takaboshi) got the best finish in 7th position.