The official qualifying for the MOTEGI GT 300km RACE, Round 8 of the 2025 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series, was held at Mobility Resort Motegi (one lap 4,801 m) in Tochigi Prefecture on November 1st (Sat.). In the GT500 class, Oyu in the No. 38 KeePer CERUMO GR Supra (Hiroaki Ishiura/Toshiki Oyu) ran strongly in Q2 to take the team’s second pole position of the season as a gift for teammate Ishiura who has announced his retirement from GT500 class racing as of this season. In the GT300 class, Yamauchi in the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Takuto Iguchi/Hideki Yamauchi) gave the team its second PP of the season in the BRZ GT300 powered by SUBARU’s signature horizontal opposed engine “EJ20” in its final qualifying before being replaced with a new engine for next season. These two cars will start from the front of their respective class grids for the race tomorrow, November 2nd, where the season championships will be decided.
□The Official Qualifying Weather: clear | Track: dry | Air temperature/Track temperature at the start of GT300 Q1: 22℃/28℃; at the start of Q2: 22℃／27℃; at the end of Q2: 23℃/28℃.
The 2025 series finally entered its last round of the season. With fierce competition between the nine teams still in contention for the GT300 class Drivers championship, the qualifying day proceeded to determine the grid positions that the teams would start the race from. Conditions at the 2:00 start of the qualifying saw clear skies and a dry track, with the air temperature at 22℃ and the track surface temperature at 28℃.
After finishing their warm-up laps, the cars began their quick timed laps. The first to run a time of 1’47.291 was the No. 87 METALIVE S Lamborghini GT3 (Natsu Sakaguchi), and this became the target time for the others, as the times were improved on one after another. And by the time most of the teams had completed their quick laps, the top time was that of the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Takuto Iguchi). It was Hideki Yamauchi in the same car No. 61 that had also recorded the top time in the morning’s official practice.
Eventually, car No. 61 brought its time down to 1’46.048, as it qualified for Q2 as the fastest qualifier in Group A. Finishing in 2nd position was the winner of Round 7 at AUTOPOLIS, the No. 666 seven × seven PORSCHE GT3R (Kiyoto Fujinami), while 3rd position went to a car that remains a contender for the championship title, the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi) with a time of 1’46.885. Also, the 2nd ranked No. 56 REALIZE NISSAN MECHANIC CHALLENGE GT-R driven by Kohei Hirate was fortunately able to finish 9th in Q1 and thus qualify on to Q2.
Next came the start of the Group B Q1 session with 14 cars competing. With the sun setting somewhat more than for Group A, the cars ran their warm-up laps, and the first to run a top time of 1’46.852 was the No. 0 VENTENY Lamborghini GT3 (Takashi Kogure). This was followed by a time of 1’47.198 by the No. 7 CARGUY Ferrari 296 GT3 (Zak O’Sullivan) that had been the pole-sitter in Round 7.
Beating these two times in the last 1 minute of the session was the No. 11 GAINER TANAX Z (Ryuichiro Tomita) that had suffered a crash in Round 7 and had been unable to run in the race. Not only had the team been able to repair the car in the two-week interval that followed but it showed itself now fast enough to record a top time of 1’46.417. This was followed by car No. 0 in 2nd position and the No. 96 K-tunes RC F GT3 (Shinichi Takagi) in 3rd position with a time of 1’46.955. The ranking leader, the No. 65 LEON PYRAMID AMG (Togo Suganami) also cleared Q1 by finishing 7th in Group B. Meanwhile, the No. 45 PONOS FERRARI 296 (Takuro Shinohara) finished in 12th position and was unable to qualify on to Q2.
Following the GT500 class Q1 session, the GT300 class Q2 session began at 2:53 in the afternoon as the sun began to sink in the west, to be competed by the top nine cars from the two Groups, for a total of 18 cars. After completing its warm-up, the first to begin its time attacks and record a time of 1’46.411 was the No. 18 UPGARAGE AMG GT3 (Yuto Nomura), and this became the target time.
Beating this time by a large margin was the holder of the record for most pole positions with 15, Hideki Yamauchi in the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT. By recording a gratifying time of 1’45.192, while also being the only one to run a time in the 1’45 range while taking top time as the session came to a close. Finishing in 2nd position was the holder of the GT300 class course record for the Motegi circuit, Iori Kimura in the Team MACH No. 5 MACHSYAKEN AIR BUSTER MC86 MACH GO. And finishing in 3rd position came the No. 52 Green Brave GR Supra GT (Seita Nonaka).
With this, the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Takuto Iguchi/Hideki Yamaguchi) managed to take the last pole position (second time this season) and start from the very front of the starting grid for the last race of the BRZ mounting SUBARU’s signature horizontal opposed engine “EJ20”, as the car’s retirement this season has already been announced. Also, this increases Yamauchi’s record of most career pole position to 16.
The top four contestants for the championship title finished the qualifying in 4th to 6th positions, including the No. 56 REALIZE NISSAN MECHANIC CHALLENGE GT-R (Joao Paulo de Oliveira/Kohei Hirate), the No. 18 UPGARAGE AMG GT3 (Takashi Kobayashi/Yuto Nomura), and the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Tatsuya Kataoka), while the ranking leader, the No. 65 LEON PYRAMID AMG (Naoya Gamou/Togo Suganami) will start tomorrow’s race from a difficult 14th position.
