The race of the 2026 AUTOBACS SUPER GT Round 4 at FUJI the “FUJI GT 300km RACE” took place on August 2nd at FUJI SPEEDWAY （1 lap 4,563m×66 laps）. Just before the start of the race, light rain fell for a short time, and perhaps as a result of this there was a big accident early on in the race. However, after that the race proceeded well. In the GT500 class the No. 100 STANLEY HRC PRELUDE-GT （Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino） starting from 2nd position on the grid came from behind to take the first victory for the new HRC PRELUDE-GT. In the GT300 class as well, the No. 52 Green Brave GR Supra GT （Hiroki Yoshida/Seita Nonaka） starting from 6th position on the grid used its well-practiced no-tire-change strategy to come from behind and take its first win since Round 7 in the 2023 season.

　After an interval of three months since Round 2 of the series, Round 4 was held at Fuji. The 20-minute warm-up drive session held before the race was run in dry track conditions throughout, but as preparations began for the start, rain began to fall and change the track condition quickly to wet. This led the teams to worry about their choice of tires out on the grid, but seeing the rain stop 5 minutes before the start led all of the GT500 class cars to start out on dry-use tires.

Considering the fact that there was still water on the track, Race Control announced that the race would be started behind the Safety Car (SC). From 1:30 in the afternoon the race started for four laps behind the SC, and from the fifth lap passing was permitted. However, it was here that a three-car accident occurred between the No. 64 Modulo HRC PRELUDE-GT （Riki Okusa/Igor Omura Fraga） that started from 7th position on the grid, the No. 23 MOTUL Niterra Z （Katsumasa Chiyo/Mitsunori Takaboshi） that started from 8th position and the No. 12 TRS IMPUL with SDG Z （Kazuki Hiramine/Bertrand Baguette） that started from 9th position. Car No. 64 went up in the air and came crashing down on the track, causing serious damage to the machine. What’s more, car No. 23 sustained damage to its suspension, which led cars No. 64 and No. 23 to drop out of the race. The driver Fraga who started in car No. 64 remained conscious but was taken to the Medical Center for safety’s sake. Regarding this accident, car No. 12 was given a 90 sec. penalty stop for colliding with another car and a drive-through penalty for passing during the SC run.

　The race was restarted behind the SC at 2:15 in the afternoon. The SC returned to the pit after leading the race through nine laps, and from the 10th lap passing was permitted again. Here, it was the No. 100 STANLEY HRC PRELUDE-GT （Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino）that had started from 2nd position on the GT500 class grid that passed the pole-starting No. 8 #8 ARTA MUGEN HRC PRELUDE-GT （Kakunoshin Ohta/Hiroki Otsu） to take the lead. This left No. 8 in 2nd place and the No. 17 Astemo HRC PRELUDE-GT（Koudai Tsukakoshi/Yuto Nomura） in 3rd place. On the 14th lap a light rain began to fall again, but it soon stopped, which led none of the teams to decide to change to wet-use tires.

　Yamamoto driving the leading car No. 100 went on to increase his lead over the pack to build up a lead of 2.5 sec. by the 17th lap. After that, Ukyo Sasahara, who had started from 6th position in the No. 37 Deloitte TOM’S GR Supra succeeded in catching the No. 16 #16 ARTA MUGEN HRC PRELUDE-GT （Tomoki Nojiri/Ren Sato） that had started the race in 5th position on the last corner of the 15th lap and passed it to move into 5th position. In front of him now was Rikuto Kobayashi in the No. 38 KeePer CERUMO GR Supra who had started the 4th position. He moved in on the in-side of car No. 17 on the 21st lap and moved past it into 3rd position. On the first corner of the 22nd lap, car No. 37 also passed No. 17 from the out-side to move into 3rd position.

Coming to the 22nd lap, which officially marked one third of the total race distance, an increasing number of cars returned to the pit to do their pit work. The first to do so were cars No. 38, No. 16 and No. 19 on the 22nd lap. Here, No. 38 succeeded in returning to the race in front of No. 16. Following this, car No. 17 made its pit stop on the 23rd lap, and No. 8 followed with its pit stop on the 24th lap. The leading car No. 100 also made its pit stop on the 25th lap and changed drivers to Makino, who managed to return to the race in front of car No. 8. What’s more, Sasahara in car No. 37 running in 3rd position made his pit stop at the end of the 29th lap and changed drivers to Alesi, who was able to return to the track in front of car No. 8.

While this was happening, Makino continued to widen his margin of lead over the pack, and when all of the cars finished their pit stops on the 33rd lap, except for car No. 12 that followed a lap behind due to its penalty, Makino was back in the lead and pulling away from the pack, and by the 35th lap he had a margin of lead of 8.278 sec. over car No. 37.

Up until this point things seemed to be going well, but with the gradually falling track surface temperature the tire performance no longer strong enough. and with 10 laps remaining in the race this made it more difficult to maintain pace. Behind this, Ohta driving car No. 8 was closing in fast on car No. 37, until it was able to pass it at the Dunlop Corner of the 59th lap and move into 2nd position, and from there the gap to the leading car No. 100 narrowed with each lap. By the 60th lap of the race the margin was down to 6.144 sec. and by the 63rd lap it was down to 4.179 sec. With the gap dropping quickly to 2.646 sec. on the 64th lap and then 1.078 by the 65th lap, the two cars entered the final lap of the race.

However, in the end car No. 8 was unable to catch car No. 100, and the result was that the No. 100 STANLEY HRC PRELUDE-GT beat car No. 8 by a mere 0.662 sec. to take its first win of the season. At the same time, it was the first win for the newly introduced Honda HRC PRELUDE-GT.

By finishing in 2nd place, in addition to the HRC PRELUDE-GT’s first win, the No. 8 #8 ARTA MUGEN HRC PRELUDE-GT gave the new car a 1-2 podium finish.

Finishing in 3rd place came the No. 37 Deloitte TOM’S GR （Supra Ukyo Sasahara/Giuliano Alesi）. What’s more, the series point leader, the No. 36 au TOM’S GR Supra （Sho Tsuboi/Kenta Yamashita） the two drivers overcame the effect of the 80kg of Success Weight it carried to climb steadily from an 11th position start to finish the race in 4th place. With this it maintained its lead in the series point standings. Meanwhile, due to the handicap of accidents and penalties, the fastest finisher among the Nissan Z NISMO GT500 cars was the No. 24 REALIZE CORPORATION Z （Teppei Natori/Atsushi Miyake） that finished in 11th place.