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.
□Official Qualifying Weather: clear | Track: dry | Air temperature/Track temperature GT500 Q1 at the start: 22℃/28℃; GT500 Q2 at the start: 23℃/28℃; at the finish: 22℃/27℃.
The 10-minute GT500 class qualifying Q1 session began at 2:33 in the afternoon. Normally, the qualifying sessions would begin with the cars waiting in their garages until about 7 minutes remained in the session before gradually taking to the track. But this time, considering the low air temperature and track temperature, the teams began going out on the track as soon as the green light came on. The cars then ran two or three warm-up laps after their first lap on the track and then ran slow laps in the low 1’40 to high 1’50 range to carefully warm up their tires before beginning their serious quick timed laps with about 3 minutes remaining in the session.
The first to record a top time of 1’36.517 was the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #16 (Hiroki Otsu). This was followed by the No. 64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Riki Okusa) with a time of 1’36.546. Then, this was beaten by the No. 23 MOTUL AUTECH Z (Mitsunori Takaboshi) with a time of 1’36.507, which then on the next lap brought that time down to 1’36.210.
The No. 24 REALIZE CORPORATION ADVAN Z (Teppei Natori) next came in with a good time of 1’36.487. Then Naoki Yamamoto, the Q1 driver of the No. 100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT, recorded a time of 1’36.377.
This was the point at which the checkered flag was shown, but still running a last time attack was the No. 1 au TOM’S GR Supra (Kenta Yamashita) that put in a fast lap of 1’35.675 to move into the top position. And yet again, it was the No. 38 KeePer CERUMO GR Supra (Hiroaki Ishiura) that followed with a time of 1’36.022, and finally car No. 24 ended all the runs with a time of 1’35.895.
With this, the top time in Q1 went to car No. 1. Second position went to car No. 24 and 3rd position went to car No. 38. For car No. 24’s Matsuda and for car No. 38’s Ishiura this race will be their last one in the GT500 class, and the result meant that car No. 24’s Matsuda would move on to Q2. As for car No. 38’s Ishiura, it meant he himself had contributed to qualifying the team on to Q2. As for car No. 64’s Takuya Izawa, for whom it will also be his last run in GT500, the fact that his teammate Okusa managed to qualify in 6th position means that Izawa will also be able to run in Q2.
As for the No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra (Kazuya Oshima), which currently stands in 2nd position in the Drivers standing, it finished in 13th position and thus unable to move on to Q2. Meanwhile, the No. 39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD GR Supra (Sacha Fenestraz) that will need to win the race in order to stay in competition for the title, it finished the qualifying in 12th position. And also, the No. 37 Deloitte TOM’S GR Supra (Ukyo Sasahara) that finished the qualifying in 14th position based on its finish in Q1, this fact leaves it in a difficult position to compete for the championship title.
The 10-minute Q2 session of the qualifying that began at 3:11 in the afternoon also became an action-packed contest until the final showing of the checkered flag. The 10 cars competing in Q2 only began their timed attack laps after carefully spending time for a thorough warm-up. First to record a time of 1’37.303 after two warm-up laps was car No. 23 (Katsumasa Chiyo). Car No. 64 (Takuya Izawa) also ran a time of 1’37.252 after two warm-up laps, but as both cars made two consecutive time attacks, No. 23 was able to bring its time down to 1’36.069, while No. 64 was only able to run a time of 1’37.115.
Next, Toshiki Oyu in car No. 38 also began consecutive time attacks after two warm-up laps. He first recorded a fast time of 1’35.796 and then brought his time down to 1’35.768 on his second attack lap. With this, the No. 38 KeePer CERUMO GR Supra (Hiroaki Ishiura/Toshiki Oyu) won pole position by a slight margin of just 0.175 sec. For Oyu, this was his second pole position of the season following the one in Rd. 2 at FUJI, and his 4th career the pole position overall. What’s more, for Oyu, who had already dedicated this qualifying as one “for Ishiura”, he will be going for the win and the season title inspired by the excellent machine set-up and his entire team’s efforts.
The top finisher in Q1, Sho Tsuboi in the No. 1 au TOM’S GR Supra (ShoTsuboi/Kenta Yamashita) took 2nd position in the qualifying with a time of 1’35.943. These two cars, No. 38 and No. 1, were the only ones to record times in the 1’35 range. These results meant that the leader in the Drivers standing, the car No. 1 driver pair, will start from the front row on the starting grid for the race. And if they are able to finish in the top two in the race, without waiting for the results of the other teams, it will give Tsuboi his third consecutive and fourth career title and give Yamashita his third career title.
Finishing 3rd in the qualifying came the No. 23 MOTUL AUTECH Z (Katsumasa Chiyo/Mitsunori Takaboshi), and although it won’t affect the title race, the team will be able to try for their second win of the season. As for the cars finishing in 4th position and downward, namely the No. 12 TRS IMPUL with SDG Z (Kazuki Hiramine/Bertrand Baguette) and the No. 3 Niterra MOTUL Z (Daiki Sasaki/Atsushi Miyake), as well as Tsugio Matsuda in car No. 24, who made his last attack ever in GT500, this gave a sweep of the four following positions to the Nissan Z NISMO GT500 cars.
As for the winner of the previous round at AUTOPOLIS, car No. 100, and the two other Honda CIVIC TYPE R-GT cars that swept the podium there, the fastest among the Honda cars in the qualifying this time was the No. 100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino) in 7th position, while two other Honda cars followed in succession to give them three Honda cars in a row. And seeing that this will be the last race for the CIVIC TYPE R-GT, they will be going into tomorrow’s race looking for a big come-from-behind victory like they achieved in the last round. Of course, since the No. 100 driver pair also have a chance to win the Drivers title, they will be striving for a win.
