The Official Qualifying for the 2026 AUTOBACS SUPER GT Rd. 4 “FUJI GT 300km RACE” took place on August 1st at Fuji Speedway in Shizuoka Prefecture (1 lap 4,563 m). The Air temperature rose to 33℃ in mid-summer weather, but this didn’t stop crowds of fans from coming to the track to see their first SUPER GT round in some time. The qualifying proceeded with no serious trouble, which made for intense action in the sessions. In the GT500 class, the Honda HRC PRELUDE-GT cars performed outstandingly in Q1 and Q2, with the pole position going to Ohta in the No. 8 #8 ARTA MUGEN HRC PRELUDE-GT (Kakunoshin Ohta/Hiroki Otsu). In the GT300 class, Kawabata in the No. 45 PONOS FERRARI 296 EVO (Takuro Shinohara/Shintaro Kawabata), who had just joined the team from this season ran strongly in Q2 with no signs of any handicap and took 1st position in the class qualifying. These two teams will start tomorrow’s Race on August 2nd at the front of their respective starting grids.
□The Official Qualifying Weather: Q1/Q2: cloudy | Track: dry | Air temperature /Track temperature GT300 Q1 start: 32℃/45℃, Q1 finish: 33℃/48℃, GT300 Q2 start: 33℃/45℃, Q2 finish: 33℃/44℃.
Due in part to the postponement of Round 3, an interval of roughly 3 months had passed since the holding of Round 2 in May by the time the GT300 class Official Qualifying for Round 4 at FUJI SPEEDWAY was run on Saturday, August 1st at 2:20 in the afternoon. First of all, the teams were divided into two groups, A and B, for the holding of Q1, based on their series point standings as of the previous round.
The 10-minute Q1 Group A was competed by 15 cars, starting at 2:20 in the afternoon. In it the No. 45 PONOS FERRARI 296 EVO (Takuro Shinohara) that had recorded the top time in its class in the morning’s official practice ran strongly and showed its speed again. The No. 45 team changed its drivers from the ones that ran in Round 4, now bringing in Shinohara, who had just become a regular driver for the team from this season but proved himself by recording a time of 1’37.100 that was faster than the one recorded in the official practice and moved him on to Q2 as the top driver. Finishing in the 2nd position in Q2 was the No. 18 UPGARAGE AMG GT3 (Takashi Kobayashi), while 3rd position went to the No. 2 HYPER WATER INGING GR86 GT (Kazuhisa Urabe). Meanwhile, the series point leader, the No. 777 D’station Vantage GT3 (Charlie Fagg) finished in 14th position and failed to move beyond Q1 by a slight margin.
The Q1 Group B that started at 2:38 in the afternoon was competed by 14 cars. This session also ran for 10 minutes. Here, the car that came through with the fastest time of 1’37.214 was the No. 7 CARGUY Ferrari 296 GT3 (Kiyushi Umegaki). He scored the top time despite being a rookie. Following him came the No. 52 Green Brave GR Supra GT (Hiroki Yoshida) that boasted a record of three consecutive podium finishes in the 3rd position in three races, and the No. 31 apr LC500h GT (Kazuto Kotaka) that came through the Q1 group B in 3rd position. In the official practice there was some trouble and cars like the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG that were unable to run many laps as a result, but nonetheless its veteran driver Nobuteru Taniguchi was just barely able to come through Q1 by finishing in 9th position.
The GT300 class Q2 (10 minutes) started at 3:13 in the afternoon and once again strong sunlight shown through. It was competed by 18 cars, and although there was some traffic congestion, the session proceeded with no real trouble.
The winner of the pole position in this Q2 session was Shintaro Kawabata, who was competing for a SUPER GT team for the first time in 3 years driving the No. 45 PONOS FERRARI 296 EVO, and driving with Shinohara in what had been known as a well-matched pair driving the Audi R8 LMS in 2021 when they won a victory was another veteran driver who had experience driving the FERRARI 296GT3 for another team. For that reason, Shinohara was able to run in Q1 trusting the words he heard from such a partner that, “The car is good” when he competed in Q2. With a time of 1’36.209, for Kawabata as well as for the PONOS RACING team, it was a happily rewarding pole position.
Finishing in 2nd position in Q2 was Kohno in the No. 60 Syntium LMcorsa LC500 GT (Hiroki Yoshimoto/Shunsuke Kohno). Finishing in 3rd and 4th position were Krütten in the No. 6 UNI-ROBO BLUEGRASS FERRARI (Yoshiaki Katayama/Niklas Krütten) and O’Sullivan in the No. 7 CARGUY Ferrari 296 GT3 (Zak O’Sullivan/ Kiyushi Umegaki), which meant that all three Ferrari 296 GT3 EVO cars finished in the top four.
