【Rd. 7 AUTOPOLIS Qualifying Day】GT300 Review: SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT takes its 2nd Pole Position of the season! What’s more, it takes 1st place in both Q1 and Q2 of the Qualifying!

Round 7 AUTOPOLIS : Qualifying GT300

　The AUTOBACS SUPER GT Round 7, the “AUTOBACS GT 3Hours RACE” Official Qualifying took place on October 17th at AUTOPOLIS in Oita Prefecture (one lap 4,674m). Although AUTOPOLIS has not been blessed with good weather in recent years, this year it had fine autumn skies with an air temperature of 24 degrees Celsius. In these conditions, in the GT500 class, Okusa in the No. 64 Modulo HRC PRELUDE-GT (Riki Okusa / Igor Omura fraga) took his second consecutive pole position following the one in the previous round at Sportsland SUGO. In the GT300 class the pole position went to Yamaguchi in the No. 61 SUBARU BZR R&D SPORT (Takuya Iguchi / Hideki Yamaguchi) for the second time this season to advance his record for most career pole positions to 18. These two teams will start tomorrow’s race on October 18 from the front row of their respective classes.

□Official Qualifying Weather: clear | Track: dry | Air temperature/Track temperature before the start of GT300 Q1: 23℃/29℃, at the start of GT300 Q2: 23℃/31℃, at the end: 22℃/30℃.

■In Q1 Group A it is Iguchi in the SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT and in Group B it is Kohno in the Syntium LMcorsa LC500 GT that take the Top Times respectively.

　The Rd. 7 official qualifying began at 2:30 PM on October 17th. On this day AUTOPOLIS was blessed with clear skies from morning with the Air temperature at 23℃ and the Track temperature at 29℃, and in the Group A Q1 session 15 cars started out to compete for a spot in Q2.

　First it was the Kumamoto native driver Hiroki Yoshida in the No. 52 Green Brave GR Supra GT who recorded a lap of 1’44.594. This time was then beaten by another Kyushu native, Takuto Iguchi in the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT with a time of 1’44.122. Then the Okinawa native Hibiki Taira in the No. 30 apr GR86 GT moved into 2nd position with a time of 1’44.179. In this way the Kyushu-native drivers showed their prowess.

　In Group A, the No. 61 BRZ advanced to Q2 with the top time. Finishing in 2nd position and 3rd position came the No. 30 GR86 and the No. 2 GR86. Meanwhile, carrying the largest load of Success Weight at 100 kg, the ranking leader, the No. 56 REALIZE NISSAN MECHANIC CHALLENGE GT-R (Joao Paulo de Oliveira) moved forward to finish in 8th position with a time of 1’44.731. As for the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi) it finished in 10th position with a time just 0.005 seconds behind that of the No. 6 UNI-ROBO BLUEGRASS FERRARI (Niklas Krütten) that finished in 9th position, thus causing No. 4 to fail to move on to Q2.

　The Group B Q1 session began at 2:48 in the afternoon. From the last 3 minutes of the session the order of the top group changed at a terrific pace. In this, the No. 60 Syntium LMcorsa LC500 GT (Shunsuke Kohno) that had taken the top time in the qualifying of Rd. 6 at SUGO and gone on to take the win from pole position recorded a time of 1’43.943 to finish at the top of Group B. Finishing in 2nd position came the No. 96 K-tunes RC F GT3 (Shinichi Takagi) that carefully warmed up his tires until just before the checkered flag was waved before making an all-out time attack of 1’43.978. Coming in 3rd position was the No. 18 UPGARAGE AMG GT3 (Takashi Kobayashi). Finishing in 5th position came Yusuke Mitsui, who was making his debut as the team’s 3rd driver in the No. 26 ANEST IWATA GAINER Z and managed to meet the team’s expectations.
　As for the No. 777 D’station Vantage GT3 (Tomonobu Fujii), currently 2nd in the standing and the No. 88 VENTENY Lamborghini GT3 (Daniil Kvyat), they finished in the 10th and 11th positions and thus failed to move on to Q2.

■In Q2, Yamauchi in car No. 61 was the only one to record a time in the 1’42 second range to take pole position and advance his career record for most pole position! But he was followed closely by a group of other GT300 regulation cars.

　The GT300 class Q2 began at 3:23 in the afternoon with the top nine cars from Group A and Group B competing, for a total of 18 cars. Here, the first to make a time attack was Hideki Yamauchi in the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT. His time of 1’42.677 was the first one in the 1’42 range, which naturally put him in top position.

　Following this came the No. 52 Green Brave GR Supra GT (Seita Nonaka) with a time of 1’43.342, and Takamitsu Matsui in the No. 25 HOPPY Schatz GR Supra GT with a time of 1’43.369, neither of which could beat the time of No. 61. Then, making a late time attack was the No. 2 HYPER WATER INGING GR86 GT (Yuui Tsutsumi) with a time of 1’43.061, which fell just 0.384 seconds short of Yamauchi’s time.

　With these results, the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Takuto Iguchi / Hideki Yamauchi) took its second pole position of the season. For Yamauchi, this advanced his record for most career pole positions for the 18th time.

　Despite finishing the Qualifying in 2nd place, the No. 2 HYPER WATER INGING GR86 GT (Yuui Tsutsumi / Kazuhisa Urabe) was given a penalty for the fact that its driver Urabe had obstructed the course of another driver, which sets it back two positions on the starting grid for the race. Finishing the Qualifying in 3rd place came the No. 52 Green Brave GR Supra GT (Hiroki Yoshida / Seita Nonaka). As for the No. 25 HOPPY Schatz GR Supra GT (Takamitsu Matsui / Ryota Horachi) that finished in 4th place, which was its highest place this season. What’s more, the No. 60 Syntium LMcorsa LC500 GT (Hiroki Yoshimoto / Shunsuke Kohno) finished in 5th place, which meant that the top five places were swept by GT300 regulation cars.