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.
＜GT500＞
The Official Qualifying 2026 Round 7 at AUTOPOLIS was held under refreshing autumn skies, and the track condition was dry from start to finish. In the GT500 class qualifying Q1 session the No. 64 Modulo HRC PRELUDE-GT (Riki Okusa / Igor Omura Fraga) advanced to Q2 with the top time of 1’32.550. Qualifying 2nd was the No. 100 STANLEY HRC PRELUDE=GT (Naoki Yamamoto / Tadasuke Makino), while 3rd place went to the No. 38 KeePer CERUMO GR (Toshiko Oyu / Rikuto Kobayashi) and in 4th place followed the No. 12 TRS IMPUL with SDG Z (Kazuki Hiramine / Bertrand Baguette).
Meanwhile, Yamashita the current ranking point leader, in the No. 36 au TOM’S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi / Kenta Yamashita) finished in 8th place with a time of 1’33.454, while 7th place went to the No. 17 Astemo HRC PRELUDE-GT (Koudai Tsukatoshi / Yuto Nomura) to also advance to Q2.
In Q2 the strong performance of car No. 64 continued, with Okusa taking pole position with a time of 1’32.414. Okusa used three of his four laps to warm up his tires, then nailed his flying lap. Despite carrying a load of 90 kg of Success Weight, Nomura in car No. 17 took 2nd place with a time of 1’32.799, and with this the Honda HRC PRELUDE-GT swept the front row. In 3rd place came the No. 19 WedsSport BANDOH GR Supra (Yuji Kunimoto / Sena Sakaguchi). Among the NISSAN Z NISMO GT500 cars, the fastest finisher was car No. 12 in 5th place. While the ranking leader, car No. 36 followed in 8th place.
＜GT300＞
In the GT300 class Q1 session the cars were divided into two groups, A and B, based on the teams’ series standings as of the previous round, and in Group A it was the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Takuto Iguchi) and in Group B it was the No. 60 Syntium LMcorsa LC500 GT (Shunsuke Kohno) that recorded the top times respectively. The top nine finishing cars from each group, for a total of 18 cars, advanced to Q2, where Hideki Yamaguchi in the No. 64 BZR recorded a fast time of 1’42.677 to take pole position. This became his second pole position after the one at Fuji, and with this he advanced his record for career pole positions in the GT300 class to 18. Finishing in 2nd place came the No. 2 HYPER WATER INGING GR86 GT (Yuui Tsutsumi / Kazuhisa Urabe), while 3rd position went to Yoshida in the No. 52 Green Brave GR Supra GT (Hiroki Yoshida / Seita Nonaka).
■Pole Position Winner Comments
GT500 CLASS
No.64 Modulo HRC PRELUDE-GT Riki Okusa: “(This is your second pole position in a row, right?) Man, this one wore me out again. I’m starting to think it’s about time for the team to let Igor handle Q2 (wry smile). Still, I’m glad I managed to secure pole position. Before Q2, Igor gave me plenty of advice and a fair bit of pressure, too; he’s really my mental coach (laughs). Since we’ve scored very few points in the races so far, our Success Weight is quite light, so the whole team is going to do our best to score a lot of points in tomorrow’s race.”
GT300 CLASS
No.61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT Hideki Yamauchi: “The car, with the Dunlop tires included, delivered truly outstanding performance. In Q2, I focused intently on my driving, making every move with the utmost care to shave off even a thousandth of a second, and that effort led to today’s pole position I think, and I’m relieved to have secured it. I’ve heard that since Iguchi-san is from Fukuoka, many of his supporters, as well as many people who have faced great hardship following the Kumamoto earthquake will be in attendance. I truly hope that our performance can help lift everyone’s spirits, and to that end, we will give it our absolute all in tomorrow’s race, with the goal of bringing the biggest possible smiles to everyone’s faces.”
