The FUJI GT 300km RACE, Round 5 of the 2014 AUTOBACS SUPER GT took place at Fuji Speedway in Shizuoka Pref. on Aug. 10. In a race thrashed by the effects of Typhoon #11 that brought out the Safety Car twice, the No. 18 Weider Modulo NSX CONCEPT-GT driven by Naoki Yamamoto and Frederic Makowiecki was the winner of the GT500 class race, bringing the Honda NSX CONCEPT-GT its first win of the season. In the GT300 class race the winner for the first time this season was the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT that led all the way for a pole to checkers victory.
After two laps behind the Safety Car, the race got off to a smooth start with the pole-starting No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Kota Sasaki) holding the lead. But, the 2nd-place No. 31 OGT Panasonic PRIUS (Koki Saga) made use of its acceleration advantage to attempt to pass No. 61 on the outside in the first turn. However, No. 31 ended up swinging too far to the outside, allowing Sasaki in the SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT to keep the lead and run on at a lap pace roughly two seconds faster than the rest of the field to build up a lead of about 10 seconds by the sixth lap. When the wind and rain started hitting harder on the ninth lap, the Safety Car came out to slow the race and Sasaki quickly lost the margin of lead he had worked to build up. In SUPER GT, in order to keep races in progress, the yellow flag is shown on the lap before the SC comes out and the cars of the two classes are kept in order, but the clock is not stopped. But this time, with the volume of rain so large, the red flag was eventually brought out and the cars returned to a stop in their grid positions. After about 30 minutes, the rain had let up enough to restart the race from the 17th lap. Again this time, Sasaki got a good start in the SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT and began building a lead again in a replay of the initial start. Eventually, by the time he brought the No. 61 car in for the routine pit stop on the 44th lap and handed over the wheel to teammate Iguchi, Sasaki had managed to build up enough of a lead to get Iguchi back in the race with the assurance of more than one minute of lead.
At this point in the race, the 2nd-place runner was the No. 11 GAINER DIXCEL SLS (Bjorn Wirdheim>Katsuyuki Hiranaka) that had charged back from 19th position earlier in the race. In the latter stages of the race, Hiranaka in the GAINER DIXCEL had been eating away at Iguchi’s lead in the SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT, bringing it down from 20 seconds to 14. Then, with about eight laps remaining in the race, the wind strengthened and rain began to fall heavily again, which caused the officials to bring out the Safety Car for the second time. This reduced the SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT’s margin of lead to virtually zero once again, and brought the possibility of losing the race if it was restarted. But this time the rain didn’t let up and the race ended with the field running in order behind the SC. In the end, the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT got its first victory of the season, having never given up its led once from the start of the race. Finishing 2nd came the No. 1 GAINER DIXCEL SLS, which has experienced trouble in the earlier races that kept it from getting good results. This time, however, the strong performance of Dunlop tires in the rain seems to have helped. Third place went to the No. 86 CrystalCroco LAMBORGHINI GT3 (Shinya Hosokawa>Koji Yamanishi) that had lost ground initially with a bad tire choice but quickly made a pit stop and changed to different tires after the restart. Having dropped to 24th position at one point, Yamanishi charged hard to win third place and a spot on the podium. Fourth place went to the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU Z4 (Tatsuya Kataoka>Nobuteru Taniguchi). The drivers ranking now has the No. 11 team of Hiranaka and Wirdheim in 1st place with 52 points based on three podium finishes although still winless this season. Dropping to 2nd position in the standings is the No. 4 team of Taniguchi and Kataoka, winners of the first two rounds of the season. Placing a solid 4th in this race has kept them just four points behind the leaders. Today’s win moves the No. 61 team of Sasaki and Iguchi up to 3rd place in the ranking.
