Round 4 FUJI SPEEDWAY : Qualifying GT500

Official Qualifying for the FUJI 350km RACE, Round 4 of the 2024 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series, took place on August 3rd at Fuji Speedway (one lap 4,563 m) in Shizuoka Prefecture. In the mid-summer heat of early August, the air temperature rose to 33 degrees Celsius just before the start of the qualifying. In these conditions, the No. 8 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #8 (Tomoki Nojiri/Nobuharu Matsushita) took its first pole position of the season. In the GT300 class, the No. 65 LEON PYRAMID AMG (Naoya Gamou/Takuro Shinohara/Haruki Kurosawa) won its second class pole of the series, following the one in the season opener. These two teams will start from the front of their respective class grids in tomorrow’s race on August 4th.

　Due to the need to clean up spilled oil on the track that occurred in the FIA-F4 Rd. 5 support race just before the start of the Official Qualifying, the qualifying had to start five minutes behind schedule. Also, in special consideration for the change in the track condition, the qualifying for the GT300 class that was run in two separate groups, was held under a WET condition format. However, because the GT500 class qualifying was run in one group all at the same time with no uneven advantages for any cars, the GT500 qualifying was run as usual in the Q1 and Q2 format with the Combined Time Qualifying Format as usual to determine the qualifying results.

　The 10-minute GT500 class Q1 session began at 3:03 in the afternoon. It was run under severe conditions with the Air temperature at 33℃ and the Track temperature at more than 50℃, which led most cars to begin their flying laps after a thorough tire warm-up over four laps or five laps.

　The first car to immediately run a lap time in the 1’28 sec. time range on its fourth lap, recording a time of 1’28.752, was the No. 39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD GR Supra (Yuichi Nakayama) that had suffered from machine trouble in the Official practice sessions. After that, it continued to run fast laps and eventually got its lap time down to 1’28.567 on its sixth lap. Following this, the No. 19 WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra (Sena Sakaguchi) ran a time of 1’28.664, immediately after which the No. 100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Tadasuke Makino) recorded a time of 1’28.026 on its fourth lap to move into the top position.

　Riki Okusa in the No. 64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT that had run the fastest time in the Official practice sessions also proved its speed here by running a time of 1’28.133 to move into 2nd place just short of the leader. Third place went to the No. 8 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #8 (Nobuharu Matsushita) with a time of 1’28.224, thus giving the Honda CIVIC TYPE R-GT a sweep of the top three spots.

　The fastest time among the Nissan Z GT500 cars was run by the No. 12 MARELLI IMPUL Z (Kazuki Hiramine) to take 4th place. Fastest among the TOYOTA GR Supra GT500 teams was the No. 38 KeePer CERUMO GR Supra (Hiroaki Ishiura) in 7th position.

　The course opened for the start of the Q2 session at 3:59 in the afternoon. As with Q1, it was a 10-minute session. Here, the GR Supra cars made a comeback. First of all, Takuya Izawa in car No. 64 recorded a top time of 1’28.673, but soon Toshiki Oyu in car No. 38 beat that time with a lap of 1’28.529. Then the No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra (Nirei Fukuzumi) moved up into 2nd place behind No. 38 with a time of 1’28.566.

　However, here again in Q2 it was a CIVIC TYPE R-GT that ran the fastest time, when Tomoki Nojiri in car No. 8 recorded a lap time of 1’28.160 on his first time attack and then brought that down to a time of 1’28.135 on the next lap. Both of these times beat the fastest time of car No. 8 in Q1 and gave the team the fastest Combined Time of all at 2’56.359 to finish on top in the qualifying. Car No. 64 also ran a fast time of 1’28.572 on its second attack, and although it remained the fourth fastest time in Q2, the team’s Combined Time was 2’56.705, while Naoki Yamamoto in car No. 100 also managed to finish 6th in Q2 just 0.516 sec. behind the leader with a lap of 1’28.651 that gave the team a Combined Time of 2’56.677.

　With these results, the No. 8 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #8 (Tomoki Nojiri/Nobuharu Matsushita) took Pole Position. And finishing 2nd and 3rd in the Qualifying were cars No. 100 and No. 64, which again gave the CIVIC TYPE R-GT a sweep of the top three places.

　The fastest qualifier among the GR Supra teams was car No. 38 in 4th position, while car No. 14 finished in 8th position. As for the current leaders in the Drivers standing, the No. 36 au TOM'S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Kenta Yamashita) team, they finished in 14th position. Also, for the winners of Round 3, the No. 37 Deloitte TOM'S GR Supra (Ukyo Sasahara/ Giuliano Alesi) it was a difficult race that left them in 15th position, which will force them to start tomorrow’s race from a tough 15th position on the grid.

　Meanwhile, among the Nissan Z NISMO GT500 teams, car No. 12 finished 4th in Q1 and 8th in Q2 to take 6th position overall. Following in 7th position overall after finishing 8th in Q1 and 5th in Q2 was the No. 24 REALIZE CORPORATION ADVAN Z (Tsugio Matsuda/Teppei Natori). As for the No. 3 Niterra MOTUL Z (Mitsunori Takaboshi/Atsushi Miyake) that won Round 2 at Fuji, it could only manage a 12th position overall this time.