2018.06.30

MOTUL MUGEN NSX-GT team takes pole position in difficult conditions!

Round 4 Chang International Circuit (Thailand) : Qualifying GT500

The official qualifying for the Chang SUPER GT RACE, Round 4 of the 2018 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series, was held on June 30th at Thailand’s Chang International Circuit. In the GT500 class, the No. 16 MOTUL MUGEN NSX-GT (Hideki Mutoh/Daisuke Nakajima) won pole position with a new course record time of 1’23.341. In the GT300 class, the class pole went to the No. 65 LEON CVSTOS AMG (Haruki Kurosawa/Naoya Gamou).

 

 

On this qualifying day for the Chang SUPER GT RACE, round 4 of the 2018 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series and the only race held outside Japan, the morning practice session was blessed with blue skies and very warm temperatures at Thailand’s Chang International Circuit, but in the afternoon, about the time the Pit Walk event was coming to an end, rain began to fall, changing the track conditions suddenly.
Though the rain soon stopped, the track was now completely covered with rainwater, in what was defined as heavy rain conditions. This led to the decision to postpone the start of the official qualifying for 15 minutes to allow for the conditions to improve. Thus, the start of the GT500 class Q1 session of the knock-out qualifying originally scheduled for 3:20 in the afternoon did not get started until 3:35 local time. In the GT300 Q1 session run just prior to this, the cars were throwing up rooster tails from the wet track in the early going, but by the end of the session those rooster tails were no longer visible from the cars running on the racing line.
Nonetheless, the GT500 started with the cars running on wet-use tires. Among these, the No. 23 MOTUL AUTECH GT-R (Tsugio Matsuda) returned to the pit after running one lap to check the track condition and changed to slick tires. This prompted some of the others cars to follow suit, but in a while some of them where seen to switch back to rain tires again. In this way, the track conditions remained troubling for many of the teams.
Despite the initial difficulty in reading the track conditions, during the 15-minute session those conditions gradually changed, and by the final stages of the session it had improve considerably. The racing line had begun to dry out and the cars began running faster times. At the top of the time board were the No. 24 Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R (Mitsunori Takaboshi/1’29.758), the No. 100 RAYBRIG NSX-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/1’29.736) and the No. 16 MOTUL MUGEN NSX-GT (Daisuke Nakajima/1’29.628), as the places changed rapidly.
Then, with two minutes remaining in the session, the No. 12 CALSONIC IMPUL GT-R (Daiki Sasaki) returned to the top spot on the board again with a time of 1’27.015. By the end of the session, the top eight qualifying for Q2 included two NISSAN GT-R NISMO GT500 cars, four Honda NSX-GT cars and two LEXUS LC500 cars. In terms of tire makes, all three cars running on Yokohama tires made it to Q2.

 

 

The 10-minute Q2 session for the GT500 class began at 4:18 in the afternoon. By this time, the course was almost all dry, but the dark clouds overhead still threatened the possibility of rain. For that reason, almost all of the cars went out on the track as soon as the session started.
With five minutes remaining in the session, the No. 17 KEIHIN NSX-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi) took the top position on the time board with a lap of 1’23.458. This fantastic time broke the course record of 1’24.307 (WedsSport ADVAN RC F/Yuhi Sekiguchi) set two years earlier by a big margin.
When the checkered flag signaled the start of the final lap, the KEIHIN NSX-GT was still in top position, and it looked as though the pole position was decided, but on its final attack, the No. 16 MOTUL MUGEN NSX-GT (Hideki Mutoh) came home with a stunning lap time of 1’23.341. This gave the pole position to the MOTUL MUGEN NSX-GT.
The last time TEAM MUGEN won a pole position as a solo team (TI Circuit Aida/LOCTITE Mugen NSX/Ryo Michigami) was in the opening round of the 2001 season. For Hideki Mutoh this was his second pole position, following the one in at Suzuka in round 6 of the 2016 season (Drago Modulo NSX CONCEPT-GT). For Yokohama Tire, it was the first pole position since the one at Suzuka in round six of the 2017 series with the KONDO RACING team and Joao Paulo Lima De Oliveira driving.
Qualifying 2nd came the No. 17 KEIHIN NSX-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi), which means there will be two NSX-GT cars on the front row of the grid for tomorrow’s race. Qualifying 3rd and fastest among the LC500 cars was the No. 39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD LC500 (Heikki Kovalainen), while 4th position went to the fastest of the GT-Rs, the No. 24 Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R (Joao Paulo Lima De Oliveira).

 

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