The SUGO GT 300km RACE, Round 6 of the 2025 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series, was held at Sportsland SUGO (one lap: 3,586 m x 84 laps) in Miyagi Prefecture on September 21st (Sun.). Both classes saw intense competition continue until the final stages, with the GT500 class race seeing Natori in the No. 24 REALIZE CORPORATION ADVAN Z / Nissan Z (Tsugio Matsuda/Teppei Natori) take a come-from-behind victory on the final lap to take his first win since November of 2016. Also, in the GT300 class race, the No. 60 Syntium LMcorsa LC500 GT (Hiroki Yoshimoto/Shunsuke Kohno) that started the race from 2nd position on the grid held off fierce pressure from behind to also take its first win since November of 2021.

The weather on Race Day at Sportsland SUGO saw fair skies in the early morning, but around noon it became increasingly cloudy, while winds also grew stronger. Due to a stoppage in the warmup run, the schedule from there was delayed by 10 minutes. Also, the No. 20 SHADE RACING GR86 GT team that had suffered from engine trouble in the qualifying had been able to complete the necessary repairs in time to start the race from the last position.

Starting from pole position, the No. 7 CARGUY Ferrari 296 GT3 (Zak O’Sullivan / Rikuto Kobayashi) made a good start, but it was followed close behind by Yoshimoto in the No. 60 Syntium LMcorsa LC500 GT (Hiroki Yoshimoto / Shunsuke Kohno) that started from 2nd position on the grid. What’s more, the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi / Tatsuya Kataoka) managed to win a battle with the No. 0 VENTENY Lamborghini GT3 (Takashi Kogure / Yuya Motojima) to move up into 3rd position, and these two cars also closed in on the leaders.

On the 5th lap, a group of GT500 class cars caught up with the GT300 class cars, which led to a series of battles developing at various places around the track. It was in this period that car No. 60 was able to pass car No. 7 as it struggled to keep pace.

On the 17th lap, there was a slight collision on the third corner between the No. 65 LEON PYRAMID AMG (Naoya Gamou / Togo Suganami) that had started the race from 8th position and the No. 45 PONOS FERRARI 296 (Kei Cozzolino / Takuro Shinohara) as they battled in the middle ground. This caused No. 65 to spin out and forced the cars following close behind to decelerate quickly. The No. 2 HYPER WATER INGING GR86 GT (Hibiki Taira) running at the back of this pack collided with the car in front of it as a result. This caused damage to car No. 2 and brought it to a stop on the track. No. 65 was able to continue running after that, but only after losing a lot of ground in the order. This caused two high-ranking cars in the championship to suffer in the early stages of the race.

The battle for the lead then saw Kataoka in the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG begin to close in on the leading car No. 60. What’s more, the No. 56 REALIZE NISSAN MECHANIC CHALLENGE GT-R (Joao Paulo de Oliveira / Kohei Hirate) that started from 7th position on the grid and move up rapidly in the order to soon joined the two leaders to make it a 3-way battle.

From around the 24th lap, some of the teams chose an early pit stop strategy. The leading car No. 60 was one of these, making its pit stop on the 28th lap and changing drivers to Kohno. Also, making its pit stop at the end of the 30th lap was the 2nd ranked No. 777 D’station Vantage GT3 (Tomonobu Fujii / Charlie Fagg) that had started the race from 10th position and moved up to 4th position in the early stages, as well as car No. 4 running in 2nd position that had delayed a bit longer to make its pit stop on the 36th lap.

With this, the provisional race leader was the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Takuto Iguchi / Hideki Yamauchi) that had chosen a delayed pit stop strategy. Among the teams that had opted for an early pit stop, the ones that would compete for a podium finish were car No. 60, car No. 56, and also car No. 777 that pitted on the 24th lap and the No. 31 apr LC500h GT (Oliver Rasmussen / Miki Koyama) that had been first to make its pit stop.

As people watched to see when No. 61 would make its pit stop, there was a collision between No. 777 and No. 31 coming out of the last corner. Running off balance, No. 777 crashed into the guard rail, and in an attempt to avoid hitting No. 777, the No. 20 SHADE RACING GR86 GT (Katsuyuki Hiranaka / Eijiro Shimizu) also hit it. With this, car No. 20 was driven to the brink of the pit road, and the GT500 class No. 64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT also hit the pit road guard rail. This immediately brought in the Safety Car, as well as setting in motion the rescue of the drivers on the track and also clearing the scatter machine parts and repairing the broken guard rail, which soon forced the showing of the Red Flag to stop the race.

Fortunately, the drivers suffered no serious injuries, but the clearing of the parts debris on the track and fixing the guard rail took a full hour of work. At 3:35 in the afternoon the cars that had been waiting on the straight were now arranged in a starting order and grouped behind the Safety Car for the race to be restarted at 4:00 in the afternoon. When the Safety Car was finally withdrawn from the track, the race would continue until the 4:30 maximum race extension time.

Just after this, car No. 61, the only car that had not made its required pit stop finally returned to its pit, but as soon as it returned to the track it developed a problem with its right rear tire. This forced it to return to the pit again as a last resort.

With this, car No. 60 now returned to the unconditional lead. But close behind it came car No. 56 to give chase. Some distance behind them in 3rd position came the No. 666 seven × seven PORSCHE GT3R (Tsubasa Kondo / Harry King) that had started the race from 9th position and worked up steadily through the field.

With de Oliveira closing the gap in car No. 56 it drew close to the tail of car No. 60 several times, but each time No. 60’s Kohno carefully chose his lines to keep No. 56 from pulling up alongside. This battle within a 1 sec. margin continued until they reached the 4:30 maximum race extension time with the checkered flag ready to be waved. At the finish line just after that, No. 60 was first to reach the goal with a margin of lead of just 0.66 sec.

This gave the No. 60 Syntium LMcorsa LC500 GT (Hiroki Yoshimoto / Shunsuke Kohno) its first victory since the FUJI round in November of the 2021 season. And this win came after the frustration of having finished the previous Rd. 5 race at SUZUKA with a 2nd place podium finish only to be disqualified for a violation found in the scrutineering after the race. Finishing the race in 2nd place was the No. 56 REALIZE NISSAN MECHANIC CHALLENGE GT-R (Joao Paulo de Oliveira / Kohei Hirate), while 3rd place went to the No. 666 seven × seven PORSCHE GT3R (Tsubasa Kondo / Harry King).