The official qualifying for the “SUGO GT 300km RACE,” Round 6 of the 2025 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series, was held at Sportsland SUGO (one lap 3,586 m) in Miyagi Prefecture on September 20th. The rain that had been feared did not fall, so the qualifying was run on a dry track. In the GT500 class, Sato in the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #16 （Hiroki Otsu/Ren Sato）took a second consecutive pole position following the one at Round 5, while setting a new course record. In the GT300 class, Kobayashi in the winning car of the precious round, the No. 7 CARGUY FERRARI 296 GT3 （Zak O’Sulliva/Rikuto Kobayashi） took the first pole position for himself and for the team. These two teams will start from the front row of their respective class grips in tomorrow’s race on September 21st.
□Official qualifying Weather: cloudy | Track: dry | Air temperature/Track temperature GT500 Q1at the start: 21℃/25℃, GT500 Q2 at the start: 22℃/26℃, at the finish: 22℃/26℃.
The rain that fell before the morning’s official practice and left the track wet would stop in the afternoon, creating difficult conditions as the track changed from wet to dry, and added to this were two Red Flag stoppages. While despite fear of rain predicted for the official qualifying, the track remained dry as the qualifying began under cloudy skies, enabling the qualifying to proceed as planned with no major accidents.
The 10-minute GT500 class qualifying Q1 session began at 2:38 in the afternoon. In it, the top ten cars would qualify on to Q2, and when it was over all 11 cars finished with times within the space of less than 1 second, proving the intensity of the competition.
All the cars spent time carefully warming up their tires over two or three laps after their first lap out of the pit before beginning their ｆlying laps. As the session entered its last 3 minutes, the order of the top times changed hands at an awesome pace. The first car to record a time in the 1’09 sec. range was Hiroki Otsu in the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #16 with a time of 1’09.825. Then Ukyo Sasahara in the No. 37 Deloitte TOM’S GR Supra ran a time of 1’09.986 despite carrying Success Weight of (SW) of 75 kg to move into 2nd position. As for the top time holder from the official practice, Syun Koide in the No. 17 Astemo CIVIC TYPE R-GT recorded a lap of 1’09.989 to squeeze in at 3rd position.
Entering the final stages, Yuhi Sekiguchi in the No. 39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD GR Supra recorded a time of 1’09.365 to jump up into the top spot. This time beat the course record of 1’09.413 established in the 2023 season by Toshiki Oyu (then driving the No. 8 ARTA MUGEN NSX GT with SW of 22 kg). What’s more, the No. 39 car was carrying SW of 58 kg.
With this, No. 39 would finish the qualifying Q1 in top position. Finishing in 2nd position came car No. 16, followed by Atsushi Miyake with a time of 1’09.942 to put the No. 3 Niterra MOTUL Z in 3rd position. Among the other cars, Sho Tsuboi in the season’s top ranked No. 1 au TOM’S GR Supra manage to finish in 7th position despite carrying the top limit of SW at 100 kg with a time of 1’10.027 to qualify on to Q2.
Meanwhile, the No. 8 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #8 (Nobuharu Matsushita), the No. 12 TRS IMPUL with SDG Z (Bertrand Baguette) and the No. 100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Tadasuke Makino) finished in 11th, 14th and 15th positions respectively, and thus failed to advance to Q2.
The 10-minute qualifying Q2 session ran from 3:16 in the afternoon to 3:26. As in Q1, the cars ran two or three warmup laps before beginning their time attacks.
Here, it was Ren Sato in car No. 16 that had won pole position in the previous round at SUZUKA who now recorded a time of 1’09.122 after two warmup laps to beat the best time run in Q1, which meant that he had run an amazing time that again set a new course record. After which he returned to his pit without waiting for the checkered flag lap. With this, the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #16 (Hiroki Otsu/Ren Sato) took an impressive second straight pole position. At SUZUKA, the team had finished the race in 4th place despite winning pole position and thus suffered the frustration of failing to mount the winners’ podium. That is why Sato stressed in his post-qualifying interview that he was determined to see his team take a victory this time running from pole position.
As for car No. 39 that had finished in the top spot in Q1, for Q2 it was Sacha Fenestraz who drove. He was able to record a good time of 1’09.568 in his final lap, but it wasn’t fast enough to beat the time of car No. 16. As for Daiki Sasaki, who had finished 3rd in Q1 in car No. 3, he once again finished the qualifying in 3rd position in Q2 with a time of 1’09.586. With this, the CIVIC TYPE R-GT, GR Supra GT500, and the Z NISMO GT500 once again split the top three at Round 6 at SUGO and will enter the final race on the 21st in that order.
Finishing in 4th position in the qualifying was the season’s point ranking leader, car No. 1. With Kenta Yamashita driving in Q2, No. 1 recorded a time of 1’09.692, faster than its time in Q1, which means that it will start tomorrow’s race from the second row of the starting grid.
