Round 7 AUTOPOLIS : Qualifying GT500

The Official Qualifying for the AUTOPOLIS GT 3 Hours RACE, Round 7 of the 2025 AUTOBACS SUPER GT, was held on October 18th at AUTOPOLIS (one lap 4,674 m) in Oita Prefecture.
As the Official Qualifying time progressed, the drizzle of rain turned into full rain and the track condition changed from Dry to full Wet condition. In these conditions. The GT500 class saw Sasaki in the No. 3 Niterra MOTUL Z (Daiki Sasaki / Atsushi Miyake) run fast despite the rain to take his second pole position in 2 years. In the GT300 class, Kobayashi in the No. 7 CARGUY FERRARI 296 GT3 (Zak O’Sullivan / Rikuto Kobayashi) took his second straight pole position following the one at the previous round at SUGO. These two teams will start at the front of their respective grids for the race on October 19th.

In the GT300 class Q1 Group A session, a car suffering from machine trouble came to a stop at trackside and left oil spilled on the track, and the time it took to recover the car and clean the track caused a 15-minute delay in the action after that. This meant that the track was finally opened for the GT500 class Q1 session at 3:33 in the afternoon. From before the start of the qualifying, light rain had begun to fall, and considering the fact that a Wet condition was called, the teams decided to try to run fast times before the track condition worsened, which led them to begin their runs sooner than usual.

　This led the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #16 (Hiroki Otsu) to record a time of 1’33.581 on its second timed lap. This was followed by the No. 64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Riki Okusa) recording a time of 1’33.983 and then the No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra moving into 3rd position with a time of 1’35.275. After this, Okusa in car No. 64 and the No. 38 KeePer CERUMO GR Supra (Hiroaki Ishiura) continued to better the top time in successive attacks until Okusa brought his fastest lap time down to 1’32.623.

　As for car No. 38, it came up behind two cars in front still running warm-up laps in the third sector of the course, forcing it to give up on another time attack at that point. After finally resuming its time attacks, No. 38 brought its time down to 1’33.512 to manage to qualify on to Q2 in 10th position. After this, Atsushi Miyake in the No. 3 Niterra MOTUL Z recorded a time of 1’32.638 on his third timed lap. The next to record a time in the 1’32 sec. range was Sena Sakaguchi in the No. 19 WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra, running a time of 1’32.687 on his 4th timed lap.

　As a result, it was car No. 64 that finished in 1st position in Q1. Following in 2nd and 3rd positions came cars No. 3 and No. 19, thus giving the Honda CIVIC TYPE R-GT, the NISSAN Z NISMO GT500 and the TOYOTA GR Supra GT500 each one spot in the top three positions. Despite the fact that No. 64 had been caught up in a multiple car crash in the previous round at SUGO, thanks to the hard work of the staff of the Modulo Nakajima Racing team and HRC that enabled them to recover in time for this Round 7, Okusa was able to answer the hopes of many concerned fans cheering him on. In his interview after the qualifying, Okusa apologized for causing worries among the fans. And he went on to say that he had to thank the team and HRC for repairing the car so well. He also added that it was these efforts that made him feel that he had to carry on in the qualifying. As for the current series point leader, the No. 1 au TOM’S GR Supra (Kenta Yamashita), it finished the qualifying in 5th position, while the winner of the previous round at SUGO, the No. 24 REALIZE CORPORATION ADVAN Z (Tsugio Matsuda), in finished in 9th position, enabling it to qualify on to Q2.

　Due to the crash that occurred in the GT300 class Q2 session, as with the Q1 session, the course was opened for the start of the GT500 class Q2 session later than originally scheduled, at 4:17 in the afternoon. By this time the rain was falling harder, and the track condition was fully Wet. As a result, the teams rushed to change to Wet-use tires just before sending their drivers out on the track to begin their runs.

One after another, the drivers went out to begin their time attacks before the track conditions got even worse. The first to record a time of 1’39.853 was Nirei Fukuzumi in car No. 14, and this was followed by car No. 38 (Toshiki Oyu) and the No. 23 MOTUL AUTECH Z (Katsumasa Chiyo). For both car No. 14 and car No. 38, these would eventually be their fastest times, but Chiyo in car would continue his time attacks until he brought his best time down to 1’39.845.

　After this, Daiki Sasaki in car No. 3 would record a time of 1’39.460 that beat the time of car No. 23. In the end, no one was able to beat the time of car No. 3, thus giving the No. 3 Niterra MOTUL Z (Daiki Sasaki/Atsushi Miyake) its first pole position of the season, while the No. 23 MOTUL AUTECH Z (Katsumasa Chiyo/Mitsunori Takaboshi) finished the qualifying in 2nd position to put two Z NISMO GT500 cars on the front row of the starting grip for Round 7. For the No. 3 team it was their first pole position since Round 8 at MOTEGI (Katsumasa Chiyo/Mitsunori Takaboshi) in the 2023 season, and for Sasaki it was his also his first pole position since Round 4 of the 2023 at FUJI (REALIZE CORPORATION ADVAN Z).

　Finishing 3rd in the qualifying was the No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra (Kazuya Oshima/Nirei Fukuzumi), but its time was a mere 0.008 sec. behind that of No. 23 in 2nd position. Meanwhile, the holder of the top time from the Q1 session, the No. 64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Takuya Izawa/Riki Okusa) qualified in 8th position to become the only Honda CIVIC TYPE R-GT to qualify on to Q2. As for the series point leader, the No. 1 au TOM’S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Kenta Yamashita), despite running on a second set of Wet-use tires in the last 3 minutes of Q2, it was unable to beat its own best time of 1’42.158 run early on with its first set tires and thus finished the qualifying in 7th position, from which it will tomorrow’s 3-hour race.