The official qualifying for the opening round of the 2025 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series, the “OKAYAMA GT 300km RACE,” was held on April 12 at the Okayama International Circuit (one lap 3.703 km) in Okayama Prefecture. As with the 2023, this season’s qualifying is held in a knock-out format, and for both classes, the number of cars advancing to Q2 has been increased, making the qualifying even more exciting to watch. In the GT500 class, Fukuzumi in the No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra (Kazuya Oshima/Nirei Fukuzumi) won pole position with his performance in Q2. In the GT300 class, Kataoka in the No. 4 GOOD SMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG recorded the fastest time in the class. With this result, these two teams will start from front position on their respective class starting grids in tomorrow’s race on April 13.
In this opening round of the 2025 season at Okayama, the qualifying took place under soft spring sunlight with dry track conditions. And while this year again adopted a knock-out format for the qualifying, this season the number of cars participating in Q1 was increased to enable 10 cars to advance to Q2. The Q1 qualifying session turned out to be a closely contested one that saw the top 15 cars’ times all grouped in the space of 0.739 sec., with the top time of 1’17.157 going to Kenta Yamashita of the 2024 season champion team, the No. 1 au TOM’S GR Supra, thus demonstrating again the speed of the TOYOTA GR Supra GT500 at Okayama. This was followed in 2nd position by a Honda CIVIC TYPE R-GT car, the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #16 (Hiroki Otsu）with a time of 1’17.208. Behind these, all four of the Nissan Z NISMO GT500 cars, led by the No. 12 TRS IMPUL with SDG Z (Kazuki Hiramine) in 7th position also advanced to Q2.
In the qualifying Q2 session, the top two cars turned in times that bettered the former course record, with Fukuzumi in the No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra (Kazuya Oshima/ Nirei Fukuzumi) recording a time of 1’16.441 to take pole position. For Fukuzumi, this was his sixth pole position, and his first since moving to a Toyota team last season. The 2nd position went to the No. 1 au TOM’S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/ Kenta Yamashita). The 3rd position went to the No. 24 REALIZE CORPORATION ADVAN Z (Tsugio Matsuda/ Teppei Natori) with a time of 1’16.619, while 4th position went to the No.100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT（Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino）, giving the TOYOTA GR Supra GT500 two cars in the top four, with one Nissan Z NISMO GT500 and one Honda CIVIC TYPE R-GT each filling out the top four places, and the times of these top four all fell within the space of 0.227 sec., thus testifying to the intensity of the competition. In tomorrow’s race as well, there is sure to be equally heated competition between the 15 cars of these three makes to win the first race of the season.
The GT300 class Q1 was run in two groups, A and B, divided based on last season’s rankings. In Group A, the top time went to Katayama in the No. 6 UNI-ROBO BLUEGRASS FERRARI (Yoshiaki Katayama/Roberto Merhi Muntan), while the top time in Group B was taken by Suganami in the No. 65 LEON PYRAMID AMG (Naoya Gamou/Togo Suganami). Q2 was contested by the nine fastest cars in the two groups for a total of 18 cars competing for pole position and the rest of the top 18 places on the starting grid. It was here that Kataoka in the No. 4 GOOD SMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Tatsuya Kataoka) performed magnificently to record the top time of 1’24.420 to win his second GT300 class pole position.
■Pole Position winner comments
GT500 CLASS
No.14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra Nirei Fukuzumi: “The weather was bad for the Official Tests conducted here at Okayama, and I myself had not been able to drive here with the new tires, and it wasn’t until this morning’s Official Practice session that I was able to run with the new tires for the first time. And that was immediately followed by the Q2 session, so I was really nervous. Since our rival, Tsuboi (No. 1 au TOM’S GR Supra) was also running in it, I thought it would be a close contest between us. But in the end, I was relieved to get our first pole position in a while (the first driving for Toyota since Round 7 of the 2023 season), so I am really grateful to everyone on the team. Tomorrow (in the race) I want to see us finish on top again.”
GT300 CLASS
No.4 GOOD SMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG Tatsuya Kataoka: “The car was set up so well, and it felt like the car was responding exactly as I wanted it to all the time. I thought I got a good time, but when they told me over the radio that I had gotten the top time, I was really surprised. I’m glad that I was able get such a good time attack. I am also glad to get my second pole position, but since I didn’t think we would get pole position today, I realize what a great job the team did in setting up the car for today, and that is why I got such a surprisingly good time. So, I am glad to say that it was the overall package that the team prepared for today that got us this pole position.”
