2019.09.21

Rd. 7 Qualifying GT500 : KEIHIN NSX-GT breaks the course record by a big margin! Taking its second consecutive pole position of the season

Round 7 Sportsland Sugo : Qualifying GT500

The official qualifying for the “SUGO GT 300km RACE,” Round 7 of the 2019 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series was held at Sportsland SUGO circuit in Miyagi Prefecture on September 21. In the GT500 class, the No. 17 KEIHIN NSX-GT driven by Koudai Tsukakoshi and Bertrand Baguette won their second straight pole position after Round 6. In the GT300 class, the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT driven by Takuto Iguchi and Hideki Yamauchi won their second straight SUGO class pole. Both poles were won with new course records this time.

 

 

 

In the Official Practice held in the morning before the Official Qualifying, the No. 17 KEIHIN NSX-GT (Bertrand Baguette) fell just short of beating the old course record (1’10.248) by recording a time of 1’10.281. This hinted at the strong possibility of even more fierce time attack competition in the Official Qualifying.
The SUPER GT Official Qualifying is usually held in a two-stage (Q1 and Q2) knock-out style format. The Q1 session for the 15 cars of the GT500 class started on schedule at 2:33 in the afternoon. This time, due to the overall shortness of the SUGO course, the GT300 class Q1 had been run with the cars divided into two groups. For this reason, the usual 15-minute GT500 class Q1 session was shortened to 10 minutes.

Partly because of this shortened time of just 10 minutes, it only took 2 minutes after the start of the session for the teams to begin entering the track, led first by the No. 12 CALSONIC IMPUL GT-R (James Rossiter). The other teams soon followed and by the time 7 minutes remained in the session, all 15 cars were on the track and running. After carefully taking time to warm up their tires, and running three or four timed laps, there were still no times down in the 1’10 range. With 1 min. 30 sec. remaining in the session, it was the No. 16 MOTUL MUGEN NSX-GT (Hideki Mutoh) that had been the 11th car to take to the track, managed a top time of 1’11.208. From that lap, there was big progress in the times and the battle for top time heated up. Following No. 16, it was the No. 8 ARTA NSX-GT (Takuya Izawa/1’10.845), then the No. 17 KEIHIN NSX-GT (Bertrand Baguette/1’10.583) and finally the No. 37 KeePer TOM'S LC500 (Ryo Hirakawa/1’10.568) that seized the top spot on the time board one after another.

Then, the car with the lightest weight handicap among the NISSAN GT-R NISMO GT500 teams, No. 3 CRAFTSPORTS MOTUL GT-R (Kohei Hirate), moved into 2nd spot with a time of 1’10.581. This dropped car No. 17 to the 3rd-place spot and the No. 1 RAYBRIG NSX-GT (Jenson Button/1’10.623) to 4th. It was then the No. 64 Modulo Epson NSX-GT (Tadasuke Makino) that moved ahead of car No. 1’s time with a lap of 1’10.606. Next, just as the checkered flag was shown to mark the final lap, it was the No. 36 au TOM'S LC500 (Kazuki Nakajima) that rose to claim the top spot with the exact same time that of 1’10.281 that car No. 17 had set the new track record with in the morning practice. Finally, car No. 64 that had continued its last time attack in the checkered flag lap came home with a time of 1’10.508 to claim 2nd position.

In this way, Q1 ended with the 3rd to 5th ranked teams in the series failing to advance to Q2, namely the No. 39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD LC500 (Heikki Kovalainen), the No. 38 ZENT CERUMO LC500 (Hiroaki Ishiura) and the No. 23 MOTUL AUTECH GT-R (Tsugio Matsuda).

 

 

 

The GT500 class Q2 session began at 3:11. As usual, this was a 10-minute session. The No. 36 au TOM'S LC500 (Yuhi Sekiguchi) that had recorded the fastest time in Q1 was the first to take to the track. It was followed soon by the No. 64 Modulo Epson NSX-GT (Narain Karthikeyan). The last car to leave the pit with six and a half minutes remaining in the session was the No. 37 KeePer TOM'S LC500 (Nick Cassidy).

The first to better the day’s fastest time was Naoki Yamamoto in the No. 1 RAYBRIG NSX-GT. He managed to better the course record of 1'10.248 he had set here last year by nearly 0.1 sec. with a new record time of 1’10.151 to top the time board. But that record didn’t stand long, as Koudai Tsukakoshi in the No. 17 KEIHIN NSX-GT too another 0.5 sec. off that with a time of 1’9.676 to move ahead of car No. 1 into the top spot. No. 1 ran another lap to try to improve on its time but failed. The other cars also failed to beat the times of these two Honda NSX-GTs before the Q2 session ended. With this, the No. 17 KEIHIN NSX-GT won its second consecutive PP of the season, following the one in Round 6 at AUTOPOLIS, and for Koudai Tsukakoshi it was his fifth career GT500 pole position.

Finishing the qualifying in 3rd position with a time of 1’10.163 after being the first on the track in Q2 was the No. 36 au TOM'S LC500. While 4th position went to the No. 37 KeePer TOM'S LC500 that recorded a time of 1’10.690 just before the session ended. This put two TOM'S LEXUS LC500 machines behind the NSX-GT teams that finished 1-2 in the qualifying. Owing to the fact that car No. 36 decided to use its third engine of the race, according to the race regulation it will be given a 10-sec. pit stop penalty in tomorrow’s race. Of the NISSAN GT-R NISMO GT500 teams, the highest qualifier was the No. 3 CRAFTSPORTS MOTUL GT-R (Frederic Makowiecki) in 7th position.

 

 

Page Top