2020.09.13

Rd. 4 Race GT500: Another Runaway Victory! Second Win of the Season for No. 17 KEIHIN NSX-GT. Tsukakoshi sheds tears of joy on home podium

The FUJIMAKI GROUP MOTEGI GT 300km RACE, Round 4 of the 2020 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series was held on September 13 (Sun) at Twin Rings Motegi (one lap 4,801m x 63 laps) in Tochigi Pref. In the GT500 class, the No.17 KEIHIN NSX-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi/Bertrand Baguette) took its second runaway win of the season just as it did in Round 2 at Fuji Speedway. In the GT300 class, the No. 65 LEON PYRAMID AMG (Naoya Gamou/Togo Suganami) came back from a 13th grid start to take the win.

 

 

 

　Despite initial worries about the weather, the Round 4 Race was held under cloudy skies but with no sign of rain. The track condition was posted as dry. The race’s formation start began on schedule at 1:00 in the afternoon.

 

　At the start, it was Yuji Tachikawa in the pole-starting No. 38 ZENT GR Supra who took the initial lead. But Bertrand Baguette in the 2nd-position grid starting No. 17 KEIHIN NSX-GT stayed right on No. 38’s tail looking for his chance to strike. Meanwhile, starting from 5th position on the grid, Takuya Izawa in the No. 64 Modulo NSX-GT had quickly climbed to 3rd place. With this, two Honda NSX-GTs were chasing the red TOYOTA GR Supra GT500 in the lead.

 

　However, No. 38 was unable to establish a clear lead over its two pursuers. Although car No. 64 began to fall off the pace from the fourth lap, No. 38 and No. 17 continued on in an increasingly fierce nose-to-tail battle. Then, at the hairpin turn of the eighth lap, as No. 38 came up behind a GT300 class back marker, Baguette in car No. 17 sprung at the opportunity to pull even with the leader on the outside. The move was successful, and No. 17 took the lead and immediately began to pull away from No. 38, establishing a lead of 1.515 sec. by the next lap.

 

 

　On the “V” corner of the 10th lap, however, as Tomoki Nojiri in the No. 8 ARTA NSX-GT and Yuji Kunimoto in the No. 19 WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra were battling side-by-side, the GT300 class No. 87 T-DASH LAMBORGHINI GT3 got caught up in the fray and bumped up against No. 8. This sent No. 87 off on a short cut to the inside, where it unfortunately crashed with No. 19 while exiting the turn. The two cars both ended up coming to a stop in the gravel on the outside of the track, which brought out the Safety Car to control the race.

 

　This erased car No. 17’s lead. But when the race was restarted on the 15th lap, Baguette in No. 17 made another dash to the front and built up his lead over No. 38 in 2nd place to more than four seconds by the 20th lap. After that, No. 38 was able to cut that lead to just over two seconds by the 24th lap, but after both cars had taken their routine pit stops, No. 17 on the 25th lap and No. 38 on the 27th, the margin of lead for No. 17 was again back to 4.416 sec.

 

　At this point in the race, Hideki Mutoh in the No. 16 Red Bull MOTUL MUGEN NSX-GT had moved up to 3rd place. Having started the race from 7th position on the grid, No. 16 had moved up to 5th place on the first lap and then was handed 4th place due to No. 19’s accident, and finally took 3rd position by passing No. 64 as its pace dropped.

 

 

　As the 62-lap race entered its second half, car No. 17 now driven by Tsukakoshi continued to run strongly in the lead. As the laps piled up, Tsukakoshi gave Ishiura running in 2nd position in car No. 38 no chance to close the gap.

 

　On the 44th lap of the race Yuhi Sekiguchi in No. 36 au TOM'S GR Supra bumped into the No. 37 KeePer TOM'S GR Supra as its driver Nick Cassidy was trying to pass him and an accident resulted. Although the two cars kept running, fallen car parts from the collision littered the track, which brought out the Safety Car for the second time in the race on the 46th lap.

 

　At this point in the race, the leader, car No. 17, had a roughly 10-sec. lead over car No. 38, but once again this lead was erased by the SC. It looked as if this might be No. 38’s chance to finally take the lead away, but when the race was restarted on the 51st lap, it was once again Tsukakoshi in car No. 17 who spurted out into the lead at a blazing pace. For Ishiura in car No. 38, it was a pace that he just couldn’t match.

 

　The No. 17 KEIHIN NSX-GT eventually ran on to take the win by a big margin of 7.796 sec. over 2nd place. Following the win in Round 2 at Fuji Speedway, this was the No. 17 team’s second win of the season. When the victorious Tsukakoshi got out of his car at the end, there were tears in his eyes that he hadn’t shown at the Round 2 win. Perhaps what brought on the tears was a combination of the facts that was born nearby in Imaichi in Tochigi Pref. and the fact that despite Twin Rings MOTEGI being Honda’s home track, the team had been unable to win here until this day.

 

 

　Finishing the race in 2nd place was the No. 38 ZENT GR Supra, while 3rd place went to the No. 16 Red Bull MOTUL MUGEN NSX-GT in its first podium finish of the season. The highest finisher among the NISSAN GT-R NISMO GT500 teams was No. 3 CRAFTSPORTS MOTUL GT-R (Kohei Hirate/Katsumasa Chiyo) in 7th place.

 

　With this second win of the season, the No. 17 pair of Tsukakoshi and Baguette piled up 43 points to lead in the season’s Drivers standings. In 2nd place in the standings are the drivers Sekiguchi and Fenestraz of the No. 36 team, while 3rd position in the standings now goes to the pair of Hirakawa and Cassidy of the No. 37 KeePer TOM'S GR Supra team that finished 6th in today’s race.

 

 

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