2018.06.30

LEON CVSTOS AMG wins GT300 pole for the first time this season

Round 4 Chang International Circuit (Thailand) : Qualifying GT300

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).

 

 

Participating in this round as a wild card entry in the GT300 class, the No. 32 est cola by AAS Motorsport (Maxime Jousse/Kantadhee Kusiri) brought the total number of GT300 cars competing to 23. With fair weather in the morning, the Official Practice session was run in severely hot temperatures. However, after noon dark clouds began to form over the circuit and finally, about 45 minutes before the scheduled start of the Official Qualifying at 3:00 (local time) raindrops began to fall and develop into a tropical squall.
The squall soon stopped but the decision was made to postpone the start of the Official Qualifying for 15 minutes in order to drain the puddles on the track. Finally the GT300 class Q1 session got underway at 3:15 with the air temperature at 29-degrees C. and the track surface temperature at 35 C. However, the track was still wet and all the cars started the session doing their laps on wet-use tires. Among them, the No. 21 Hitotsuyama Audi R8 LMS (Ryuichiro Tomita) was especially aggressive about going after a fast time. This team had won the pole position here in Thailand in 2016, and in an attempt to repeat that success, turned in a lap of 1’42.023 that put it in the top spot on the time board.
But, as the track began to dry out rapidly, it was the local No. 32 est cola by AAS Motorsport (Kantadhee Kusiri) car that came in with the top time of 1’41.575 on the final lap. This team, which had also taken pole position here at Chang International Circuit in the first holding in 2014, showed their strength in the difficult weather conditions by recording the fastest time in the session.

 

 

Following the GT500 class Q1 session, the GT300 class Q2 session got started at 4:00 in the afternoon. The track had dried off rapidly during the GT500 class Q1 session, so all of the car in this Q2 session started out on slick tires.
The track condition continued to improve as the cars ran their laps, enabling the No. 11 GAINER TANAX GT-R (Katsuyuki Hiranaka), the No. 10 GAINER TANAX triple a GT-R (Hiroki Yoshida) and the No. 21 Hitotsuyama Audi R8 LMS (Richard Lyons) that had been second fastest in Q1 to break the 1’33 barrier with times in the 1’32 range. Then, with one minute remaining in the session, now it was Andrea Caldarelli, who replaced Marco Mapelli at the wheel of the No. 88 MANEPA LAMBORGHINI GT3 for Q2 and managed to run a lap of 1’32.554, moving him to the top of the time board.
Then, as the session entered its final lap, the No. 65 LEON CVSTOS AMG (Naoya Gamou) improved its time to an amazing identical lap time as Caldarelli, at 1’32.554. However, since the time that was recorded first determined the tiebreaker, the pole position went to the No. 88 MANEPA LAMBORGHINI GT3 and the 2nd position went to the No. 65 LEON CVSTOS AMG. But there was to be yet another turnaround when violations were found in the No. 88 MANEPA LAMBORGHINI GT3 and the No. 10 GAINER TANAX triple a GT-R cars in the post-qualifying technical inspection, causing both of their times to be disqualified.
Thus, the No. 65 LEON CVSTOS AMG got its second pole position of the season following the one in the season opener at Okayama. Second position went to the No. 21 Hitotsuyama Audi R8 LMS and 3rd position to the No. 55 ARTA BMW M6 GT3 (Q2 driver: Shinichi Takagi).

 

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