Rd. 6 SUGO: the Official Practice Review

 

 

 

　The Official Qualifying at Sportsland SUGO saw rain falling constantly from morning, with the air temperature below 20℃. With these conditions, a “Lights On” call was issued when the track opened at 9:15 in the morning, and after that the session was interrupted several times with Red Flag stoppages.

About five minutes after the start, a GT300 car crashed. This brought out a Red Flag to stop the session. Since it was a crash that required repair to the track, thanks to fast work by Course Marshalls, the session was restarted at 9:37 in the morning, but as the rain grew stronger once again, the Red Flag was shown again at 9:44 a.m.

After waiting for the weather to improve, the Official Practice session was finally started at 9:53 in the morning. With this, the cars were at last able to begin running laps at race speed. The first to record a top time of 1’30.945 was the No. 17 Astemo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi / Kakunoshin Ohta), after which the top position changed hands repeatedly with the No. 39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD GR Supra (Yuhi Sekiguchi / Yuichi Nakayama) recording a time of 1’28383, the No. 64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Takuya Izawa / Riki Okusa) posting a time of 1’28.341, and the No. 36 au TOM'S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi / Kenta Yamashita) a top time of 1’27.729.

 

 

 

 

　At about 50 minutes into the session, Oyu in the No. 38 KeePer CERUMO GR Supra (Hiroaki Ishiura / Toshiki Oyu) came in with a time of 1’24.980 to claim the top spot. However, just after that a GT300 class car ran off the track at the 4th corner, bringing out the third Red Flag of the session. The session was restarted at 10:16 a.m. but only to be stopped again due to heavier rain at 10:31 a.m. with the fourth Red Flag of the session.

Furthermore, in the exclusive GT300 class session that started at 10:45 in the morning, due to the fact that the Red Flag was shown twice to stop the session, this brought the total to six Red Flag stoppages, which brought this Official Practice to an end and unfortunately meant that the exclusive session for the GT500 class could not be held.

 

 

 

 

　With this, the top spot in the Official Practice (GT500 class) went to the No. 38 KeePer CERUMO GR Supra (Hiroaki Ishiura / Toshiki Oyu), while 2nd position went to the No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra (Kazuya Oshima / Nirei Fukuzumi), and 3rd position to the No. 19 WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra (Yuji Kunimoto / Sena Sakaguchi), thus giving the TOYOTA GR Supra a sweep of the top three positions.

Among the Nissan Z NISMO GT500 cars, the fastest finish was the 5th place by the No. 12 MARELLI IMPUL Z (Kazuki Hiramine / Bertrand Baguette). Among the Honda CIVIC TYPE R-GT cars, the best finish was by the No. 64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Takuya Izawa / Riki Okusa) in 6th position.

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the GT300 class, the first upset came just about 5 minutes into the Official Practice. The winner of last year’s Round 6 at SUGO and the championship title, the No. 52 Green Brave GR Supra GT (Hiroki Yoshida / Seita Nonaka) spun out of control coming out of the SP-out corner on its third lap on the track. The machine crashed into the tire wall on the in-side of the track. This brought out the Red Flag to stop the session. This resulted in considerable damage to the rear end of car No. 52 and left it unable to run again in the session. After the session restart, there were a number of cars spinning out and running off the track, thus making for difficult conditions on the track.

Despite these tough conditions, it was the No. 20 SHADE RACING GR86 GT (Katsuyuki Hiranaka / Eijiro Shimizu) that was able to run a fast time. Running on Michelin tires known for their good performance in the rain, No. 20’s time of 1’35.317 not only topped the GT300 class but also compared well in speed with the lower end of the GT500 class. This time was followed by those of the winner of the last round at Fuji, the No. 65 LEON PYRAMID AMG (Naoya Gamou / Takuro Shinohara), the No. 2 muta Racing GR86 GT (Yuui Tsutsumi / Hibiki Taira), and the No. 18 UPGARAGE NSX GT3 (Takashi Kobayashi / Syun Koide).

After this, the rain grew stronger, causing a 9-minue stop in the session. When the session was restarted, the cars began running faster times again. Here, the No. 777 D'station Vantage GT3 (Tomonobu Fujii / Charlie Fagg) recorded a top time of 1’34.710. But that was soon beaten by car No. 65 with a time of 1’33.961, quickly followed by a further drop to 1’32,614. However, that was also beaten by the record-holder of five pole positions at SUGO, Yamauchi, in the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Takuto Iguchi / Hideki Yamauchi) with a time of 1’32.592, and then by a new top time by Hiranaka in car No. 20 with a lap of 1’31.553.

This led the Official Qualifying into a roughly 10-minute head-to-head battle of time attacks by these two cars, which saw No. 61 record a time if 1’30,136, only to be outdone again by No. 20 with a time of 1’29.389. In the end, this time by car No. 20 would be the fastest in the Official Practice. Just after this battle for the top time, the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi / Tatsuya Kataoka) and the No. 30 apr GR86 GT (Hiroaki Nagai /Rikuto Kobayashi) ran off the track and came to a stop. This brought out the Red Flag to stop the action again.

The session was restarted but only to see the rain increase in strength, bringing down the pace of the cars. The increase in rain caused the session to be stopped, but after waiting for an improvement, it was started again to enable the holding of the exclusive sessions for the two classes. Here again, there were spinouts and crashes by the No. 22 R'Qs AMG GT3 (Hisashi Wada / Masaki Jyonai), and the No. 6 UNI-ROBO BLUEGRASS FERRARI (Yoshiaki Katayama / Roberto Merhi Muntan) that brought out the Red Flag. In the end, these Red Flags brought an end to the Official Practice.