2015.04.05

Runaway GT300 Victory for TOYOTA PRIUS apr GT

Round 1 Okayama International Circuit : GT300 Race

On the afternoon of April 5, the Okayama GT 300km Race, Round 1 of the 2015 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series, took place at the Okayama International Circuit in (Okayama Pref.). The winner in the GT500 class was the No. 37 KeePer TOM'S RC F driven by Andrea Caldarelli and Ryo Hirakawa, while the winner of the GT300 class was the No. 31 TOYOTA PRIUS apr GT driven by Koki Saga and Yuichi Nakayama.
Last year's season opener at Okayama was also held under rainy skies, and this year's was again a wet race plagued by rain and constantly changing track conditions throughout the race.

 

  

 

The start of the GT300 class race saw the pole-sitting No. 10 GAINER TANAX GT-R (Andre Couto) hold its lead, followed by two hybrid machines in the No. 55 ARTA CR-Z GT (Shinichi Takagi) and the No. 31 TOYOTA PRIUS apr GT (Koki Saga). Starting from 2nd position on the grid, the No. 11 GAINER TANAX SLS (Bjorn Wirdheim) team had gambled on the weather improving and chose to start the race on slick tires. This turned out to be a mistake, however, and caused No. 11 to drop back nearly to the end of the pack.
Among the three machines competing for the lead, the TOYOTA PRIUS apr GT clearly had the tires and machine set-up that best fit the conditions and was turning out the best lap times that enabled Saga to pass the ARTA CR-Z GT and GAINER TANAX GT-R in quick succession to take the lead. At the wheel of the TOYOTA PRIUS apr GT, Saga was clearly widening the gap with the ARTA CR-Z GT, which had by this point moved up to 2nd position. By mid-point in the race around lap 40, Saga had built up a lead of 20 seconds. Meanwhile, wear on its tires had caused the ARTA CR-Z GT to slow after about 30 laps until it was finally passed by the chasing No. 21 Audi R8 LMS ultra (Richard Lyons) and dropped to 3rd position. Thinking about the second half, however, Takagi struggled on to hold that position until he made the routine pit stop on lap 40, from which point his teammate, Takashi Kobayashi was able to catch and pass the No. 21 Audi R8 LMS ultra (Tomonobu Fujii) to regain 2nd position.

 

 

After making its routine pit stop on the 44th lap, the leading TOYOTA PRIUS apr GT with second-stint driver Yuichi Nakayama now at the wheel continued in the lead with no slackening of its formidable pace. Although the ARTA CR-Z GT had been able to close the gap somewhat when there was a lull in the rain, Nakayama was able to pull away again when the rain once again began to fall harder in the late stages of the race. When he finally took the checkers at the finish, Nakayama had a 42-second lead over the ARTA CR-Z GT in 2nd place. Finishing in 3rd and 4th place were two of the Audi R8 machines that had performed so well in the pre-season tests, namely the No. 21 Audi R8 LMS ultra and the No. 86 Racing Tech Audi R8 (Christian Mamerow>Shinya Hosokawa).
The defending champion, the No. 0 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKUSLS (Tatsuya Kataoka>Nobuteru Taniguchi), ran a stubbornly determined race to move up from a 7th-place start to finish 5th. As for cars adopting the new mother chassis debuting this season, the No. 25 VivaC 86 MC (Takeshi Tsuchiya>Takamitsu Matsui) finished a respectable 6th. And, the No. 60 SYNTIUM LMcorsa RC F GT3 (Akira Iida>Hiroki Yoshimoto) managed to move up from a 20th-position start to finish the race in 10th. The LEXUS RC F GT3 also managed to finish in the points in its debut race.
As for the No. 22 GREENTEC SLS AMG GT3 that had crashed in the morning's free practice, the repairs proved too difficult to enable the team to make it to the starting grid in time, thus forcing it had to withdraw from the race.

 

 

 

 

 

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