The 2025 AUTOBACS SUPER GT season will begin in less than one month.
The other day, this year’s first SUPER GT Official Tests were held at the Okayama International Circuit, where the opening round of the season will be held (April 12th, 13th), and at the tests we interviewed seven drivers who are the focus of particular attention in the GT500 class. Here we introduce their comments, as they look forward to the opening round.

The second driver we interviewed was Kenta Yamashita, who along with Tsuboi became a GT500 class Drivers champion for the second time after moving to the au TOM’S GR Supra team last season.

He commented that even in the tests held in the rain he didn’t feel any negative elements. And that he felt that they could win in the opening round.

Kenta Yamashita
No. 1 au TOM’S GR Supra（2024 GT500 class Champions）

–In the Official Tests at Okayama, you (Yamashita) ran mainly at times when the track was wet, what were the conditions like?
 
I think it was the same for all the teams, that the temperatures were too low on both days, so everyone was running on tires that were not in their most effective performance range. As a result, we couldn’t run proper tests, and I felt that with regard to the tire tests, we were unable to test as usual. However, even in those difficult conditions, since we were able to get performance from the tires that showed a high level of potential in both wet and dry conditions, I think we will be able to go into the opening round feeling well prepared.
 
I expected that teams that came with tires that couldn’t perform well in such low air and track surface temperatures would refrain from running in such conditions. But, since we had brought some tires that could handle these conditions to some extent, we decided to run and were able to see how they performed (changes in performance in low track temperature conditions), so I feel we were able to do some good testing considering the conditions.  

For the second day, we knew that rain was forecasted, so in Session 2 (afternoon of Day 1) we did quite long tests with one set of tires. And on the second day, with the aim of doing some serious tire tests, we had tires that we hadn’t used the day before. And since the air temperature was indeed a bit lower than we had expected, we weren’t able to run tests as thoroughly as we had hoped. Still, I believe that we were able to verify their performance fairly well.

–It is one month now until the opening round at Okayama. Please tell us what condition you think your team is in and what your expectations are?
 
As things stand now, if no special trouble arises, I think we should be able to win the opening round. But judging from things like the tests at Sepang, it seems as if cars like the Honda car No. 100 (STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT) will be quite fast, so things may not be that easy for us.
But if we put up a good fight, we should at least be able to get a podium finish, and hopefully the win. Our season’s goal is of course to get another straight championship title. But anyway, I haven’t seen any negative elements in these two days of tests.

In the next interview, we will talk with Daiki Sasaki, who has returned to the GT500 class this season with the No. 3 Niterra MOTUL Z team.