The official qualifying for the SUZUKA GT 300km RACE, Round 5 of the 2025 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series, took place at Suzuka circuit (1 lap 5,807m) in Mie Prefecture on August 23rd (Sat.). In the qualifying that took place in hot conditions with the air temperature at 34 degrees Celsius. In the GT500 class, Sato in the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #16 (Hiroki Otsu / Ren Sato) got his first pole position. In the GT300 class, Yamauchi in the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Takuto Iguchi / Hideki Yamauchi) took pole position to extend his record for the most class pole positions to 15. These two teams will start tomorrow’s final race on August 24th from the front row of their respective class starting grids.
□Official Qualifying Weather: clear | Track: dry | Air temperature/Track temperature GT500 Q1 at the start: 34℃/47℃; GT500 Q2 at the start: 33℃/46℃, at the finish: 33℃/45℃.
As the 2025 season enters its second half, the first race to be held was Round 5 at Suzuka. The previous Round 4 at Fuji was held as sprint races with no Success Weight carried by any car, but Round 5 was held in the usual SUPER GT format.
For the Qualifying, the air temperature was extremely hot, reaching over 34℃, and the track surface was dry throughout the sessions. The 10-minute Q1session began with the track opening at 3:48 in the afternoon. It started with one car after another beginning their runs, and the No. 64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT driven by Takuya Izawa, who this week announced that he will be retiring from the GT500 class as of this season, left the pit to begin its runs with seven minutes remaining in the session, and the last to begin its runs was the No. 100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Tadasuke Makino) with just under 5 min. 30 sec. remaining in the session.
From this point on the competitors began a fierce battle of time attacks to qualify to move on to Q2. The first to begin its attacks was the No. 23 MOTUL AUTECH Z (Mitsunori Takaboshi). It proceeded to record the fastest times overall in Sector 1 and Sector 2, however when entering the west straight it came up behind the No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra and unfortunately had to end its attack. After this it had to restart its attacks.
Next, Otsu in car No. 16 began to record the fastest times overall from Sector 1 and went on to record the top time of 1’45.798, but this was soon beaten by a margin of just 0.060 sec. by the No. 12 TRS IMPUL with SDG Z (Kazuki Hiramine) with a time of 1’45.738 that proved to be the best time in Q1. With this, car No. 16 finished Q1 in the 2nd position. In 3rd position came the No. 19 WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra (Sena Sakaguchi) with a time of 1’45.867, meaning that the top three positions went to cars of three different makes.
Among the other cars, after one cool-down lap, car No. 23 recorded a time of 1’45.993 on the 5th lap to finish Q1 in 4th position, while the No. 3 Niterra MOTUL Z (Atsushi Miyake) recorded a lap of 1’46.083 to take 5th position, and the No. 24 REALISE CORPORATION ADVAN Z (Tsugio Matsuda) took 10th position to ensure that all the Nissan Z NISMO GT500 cars succeeded in moving on to Q2.
Meanwhile, the highly successful winner of the previous FUJI Round Race 1 and also taker of 2nd position in Race 2, the No. 1 au TOM’S GR Supra (Kenta Yamashita), which had to carry the equivalent of 100kg in Success Weight with a grade 3 level of fuel flow restriction, only managed to finish in 13th position, thus failing to move on to Q2.
Following at 4:26 in the afternoon came the start of the GT500 class Qualifying Q2 session. The first cars to begin their runs on the track were the three Nissan Z NISMO GT500 cars, the car No. 12 (Bertrand Baguette), car No. 23 (Katsumasa Chiyo), and car No. 24 (Teppei Natori). They were followed one after another by the No. 16 (Ren Sato), the No. 14 (Kazuya Oshima) and the No. 19 (Yuji Kunimoto), and with just under 4 min. remaining in the session, car No. 100 (Naoki Yamamoto) was the last enter the track.
Among them, it was Sato in car No. 16 who started his time attacks early after just one warm-up lap, and immediately he recorded a time of 1’45.377 to move into the top position. After that Sato returned to his pit and ended his attacks without waiting for the checkered flag lap.
At this point there was 1 min. 30 sec. remaining in the session. The remaining cars on the track were still involved in a fierce competition of time attacks. Among them three cars ran especially fast times, including car No. 23, which spent its first three laps in warm-up and then recorded a time of 1’45.564, and car No. 3, which spent two laps in warm-up and then ran a time of 1’45.681, and car No. 24, which completed three warm-up laps before running a time of 1’45.740. However, none of these cars were able to beat the time run by car No. 16.
The other cars recording times in the 1’45 sec. range were the top car from Q1, No. 12, which also recorded a fast time here of 1’45.762, while the No. 64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Riki Okusa) ran a time of 1’45.985.
However, none of these cars were able to beat the time of No. 16. With this, the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #16 (Hiroki Otsu / Ren Sato) won its first pole position of the season. Not only was this the team’s first pole of the season, but it also turned out to be the first pole position this season by a car other than the TOYOTA GR Supra GT500, and for Ren Sato it was also his first personal pole position in SUPER GT competition.
Qualifying in 2nd position was the No. 23 MOTUL AUTECH Z (Katsumasa Chiyo / Mitsunori Takaboshi), while the 3rd position in the Qualifying went to the No. 3 Niterra MOTUL Z (Daiki Sasaki / Atsushi Miyake), which gave the Nissan Z NISMO GT500 cars a sweep of the top five places in the qualifying. As for the top qualifier among the TOYOTA GR Supra GT500 cars, it was the No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra (Kazuya Oshima / Nirei Fukuzumi) in 7th position.
Meanwhile, in the Q2 session, the No. 19 (Yuji Kunimoto) that ran a time of 1’45.987, and the car No. 100 that ran a time of 1’46.620 were both penalized afterwards for driving off the track (with all four wheels off the track limit), which caused their best time to be disqualified and their second best time to become their official qualifying time. This moved them back to 9th and 10th positions respectively in the qualifying.
