2022.05.04

Rd. 2 The race GT500: Battling through repeated turnovers! ARTA NSX-takes its unexpected first win of the season!

Round 2 Fuji Speedway : Race GT500

The FAV HOTEL FUJI GT 450km RACE, Round 2 of the 2022 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series was held on May 4th (Wed. holiday) at Fuji Speedway (one lap 4,563m x 100 laps). Big accidents caused the race to be stopped twice, resulting in its finish at the end of 62 laps, which saw the GT500 class victory go to the No. 8 ARTA NSX-GT (Tomoki Nojiri/Nirei Fukuzumi), while the GT300 class win went to the No. 10 TANAX GAINER GT-R (Ryuichiro Tomita/Riki Okusa/Yusuke Shiotsu).。

 

 

 

 

 

The Round 2 race began at 2:30 in the afternoon. Due probably to the high track surface temperature, there were big changes in the GT500 class leaders in opening lap. First of all, the No. 37 KeePer TOM'S GR Supra (Sacha Fenestraz) starting from 4th position on the grid got a great start and passed the pole-starting No. 19 WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra (Sena Sakaguchi) to take the lead. Also, No. 3 CRAFTSPORTS MOTUL Z (Katsumasa Chiyo) that starting from 4th position on the grid moved up to tail No. 37, but on the 2nd lap, Sho Tsuboi in the No. 36 au TOM'S GR Supra that had started from 8th position overtook No. 3 to give the TOYOTA GR Supra GT500 cars a one-two lead.

In the early stages of the race these leading three began to pull away from the No. 100 STANLEY NSX-GT (Naoki Yamamoto) and the No. 8 ARTA NSX-GT (Nirei Fukuzumi) in 4th and 5th position. Meanwhile the battle for the lead between the two GR Supras in front heated up, until car No. 36 managed to grab the lead on the 24th lap.
Until this year, the Round 2 race at Fuji had been run as a 500km race, but this time, while remaining a long race, the distance was shortened to 450 km, and the requirement was for each team to make at least two refueling pit stops.

This time the race proceeded into the middle stages with no serious upsets. But on the 44th lap, a GT300 class machine lost control coming out of the 100R curve and crashed. When it came to a stop on the track, this brought the call of a Full Course Yellow (FCY). Just before the FCY was called, the No. 39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD GR Supra (Yuichi Nakayama → Yuhi Sekiguchi) had made its pit stop, and this bit of luck enabled it to move up to 3rd position. The crash had caused the need for the track-side barrier to be repaired, which made a change from the FCY to a Safety Car intervention necessary. And because additional would be need for the repair the Red Flag was shown to stop the race temporarily.

 

 

 

 

 

About 25 minutes after the Red Flag, a three-lap run behind the Safety Car led to the restart of the race. At this point, car No. 36 (Giuliano Alesi) was in the lead. Chasing it were car No. 37 (Ritomo Miyata) and car No. 39 (Yuhi Sekiguchi), which were in turn followed by a Nissan Z GT500, the No. 3 (Mitsunori Takaboshi), and between these cars a fierce battle began. It was car No. 39 that came out in front from this fight, followed by cars No. 3 and No. 37 in 2nd and 3rd positions respectively, but the battle for the lead continued.

On the home straight at the end of the 58th lap, cars No. 3 and No. 37pulled into car No. 39’s slip stream. At that moment a GT300 class car was running ahead of them at a slow pace, apparently due to machine trouble. Realizing that there was a slow-running machine ahead of them, No. 39 and No. 3 tried to avoid it, but No. 3 spun out and crashed hard into the guard rail on the grandstand side of the track.
Immediately the Red Flag was shown to stop the race for a second time. The car was badly damaged, but fortunately, the driver was uninjured. However, there was serious damage to the guard rail that required repair, and the break in the action grew longer and longer.

At 6:10 in the afternoon, the Safety Car was brought in again for a run to restart the race, but with only ten minutes remaining before the regulation time extension deadline for the race. The result was that the race ended while the Safety Car run was in its third lap.
This meant that car No. 39 took the checkered flag first, but it was subsequently given a penalty for having conducted work on car during the Red Flag break, a similar penalty was leveled against car No. 37 for a collision with car No. 36 during the restart after the first Red Flag. As a result, 40 seconds was added to the times of these two cars (which normally would have resulted in a drive-through penalty), and this dropped the two cars to 13th and 14th place finishes respectively.

This meant that Nojiri in the No. 8 ARTA NSX-GT (Tomoki Nojiri/Nirei Fukuzumi), had been able to hold on to 3rd position was moved up to 1st place as a result, to give the team their first win of the season. Finishing in 2nd place was the No. 36 au TOM'S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Giuliano Alesi). Third place went the No. 12 CALSONIC IMPUL Z (Kazuki Hiramine/Bertrand Baguette). In addition, since the required 75% of the initially designated race distance had not been complete, according to the regulation, the series points awarded for this race were halved.

 

 

 

 

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