2024.03.24

【Official Tests Fuji – Day 2】 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #8 records fastest time in the morning! GT300 sees muta Racing G86 GT take top finish

Official Tests at Fuji Speedway March 24 (Sun.)

On March 24, being the last tests before the season’s opening round, the teams worked mainly with their Dry-use tires and switched to Wet-use tires as rain fell in the afternoon session, thus putting in track time aggressively in both sessions. On this day, Session 3 of the tests was held from 9:00 in the morning to 12:00 noon, and the afternoon Session 4 was lengthened by 30 minutes to run from 14:00 to 17:00, due to the shortening of Session 2 the previous day by a Red Flag stoppage.

 

 

 

 

　Although there were still some wet spots on the track, the first session was run in Dry condition. Most of the teams ran time attacks on new dry-use tires that they couldn’t test the day before, after which they changed to long-lap tests. In these repeated runs, the teams focused on tire choices and their menus of machine setting tests.

　Meanwhile,　the No. 36 au TOM'S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Kenta Yamashita) recorded a lap time in the 1’28 sec. range. This was followed by the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #16 (Hiroki Otsu/Ren Sato). No. 8 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #8 (Tomoki Nojiri/Nobuharu Matsushita), No. 39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD GR Supra (Yuhi Sekiguchi/Yuichi Nakayama), and the No. 23 MOTUL AUTECH Z (Katsumasa Chiyo/Ronnie Quintarelli).

　As the session moved on toward its second half around 10:30 in the morning, the No. 3 Niterra MOTUL Z (Mitsunori Takaboshi/Atsushi Miyake) ran a top time of 1’28.109. This was followed in order by cars No. 23, No. 36, the No. 12 MARELLI IMPUL Z (Kazuki Hiramine/Bertrand Baguette), car No. 16, the No. 38 ZENT CERUMO GR Supra (Hiroaki Ishiura/Toshiki Oyu), and the No. 100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Syun Koide), all running in the 1’28 sec. range. At 10:45, a GT300 class car spun out at the pit road exit. Also, at 11:05 the No. 17 Astemo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi/Kakunoshin Ohta) came to a stop at the Dunlop Corner, together this resulted in two Red Flag stoppages, but in both cases the session was restarted after a short time.

　In the final stages of the session, the cars began improving on their best lap times one after another. Matsushita in car No. 8 recorded a top time of 1’27.834, which would be the fastest time of the morning session, and next came car No. 16 in 2nd position, thus giving the ARTA teams a 1-2 finish. The team Director, Hirokatsu Tanaka, commented later, saying that the day before they ran with both cars (using the same settings) but had a difficult time getting them to run the same lap times. As for the cars recording times from the third fastest downward, from car No. 23 in 3rd position to the Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Takuya Izawa/Riki Okusa) in 14th position, all had times in the 1’28 sec. range and all within a space of just 1.030 sec. These results already gave a clear indication of how intense the competition will be this season. Then, as the session neared its end, rain began to fall again, and the track surface condition gradually changed to Wet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

　The GT300 class session also saw competition close with only fractional time differences. First to post a top time was No. 777 D'station Vantage GT3 (Tomonobu Fujii/Marco Sorensen), but this was soon beaten by the No. 65 LEON PYRAMID AMG (Naoya Gamou/Takuro Shinohara). Behind this, with times in the 1’39 sec. range, came the No. 45 PONOS FERRARI 296 (Kei Cozzolino/Lilou Wadoux) and the No. 2 muta Racing GR86 GT (Yuui Tsutsumi/Hibiki Taira), followed by the No. 18 UPGARAGE NSX GT3 (Takashi Kobayashi/Yusuke Mitsui). As for car No. 45 that had crashed in yesterday’s morning session and suffered severe damage to its front end, overnight the team brought in a replacement car and with this car with a black body and running number, the team was able to compete.

　About one hour after the start of the session, the No. 52 Green Brave GR Supra GT (Hiroki Yoshida/Seita Nonaka) moved up to the top spot, but soon after, the No. 88 Lamborghini* (Takashi Kogure/Yuya Motojima) beat this time, and then car No. 65 regained the top spot. In this way, the fastest time continued to change hands as time went by. Along the way, incidents like a crash at the exit of the pit road by the No. 96 K-tunes RC F GT3 (Morio Nitta/Shinichi Takagi) brought two Red Flag stoppages, and eventually car No. 88 emerged again in the top spot. But finally, car No. 2 ran a lap of 1’36.480 that became the fastest time of the session.
*The No. 88 team name is to be announced at a later date.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

　In the afternoon Session 4, the track condition was Wet throughout, but the rain grew heavier and lighter and paused at times, making for unstable conditions. During the session the teams continued their menus of tire tests. There were no further improvements on the morning session’s times, as time went by steadily.

 

　

 

　After the session passed its mid-way point at 3:30, there were two over-runs at the first turn of the circuit by cars No. 16 and No. 64, which brought a Red Flag stoppage. Neither of the two cars suffered any serious damage, and the session was soon restarted, but 4 minutes later the No. 37 Deloitte TOM'S GR Supra (Ukyo Sasahara/Giuliano Alesi) came to a stop at the 300R curve, bringing another Red Flag stoppage.

　With no significant incidents after that, the 5-hour afternoon session came to an end. In this Session 4, Chiyo in car No. 23 was the only one to run a time in the 1’34 sec. range, when he recorded a top time of 1’34.850. The second fastest time went to car No. 12, giving the Nissan Z GT500 a 1-2 finish. Behind them came two TOYOTA GR Supra GT500 cars, the No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra (Kazuya Oshima/Nirei Fukuzumi) and No. 36, while the No. 100 Honda CIVIC TYPE R-GT finished 5th. The times of the leading cars down to 7th place all came within a space of just 1 sec.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

　In the afternoon GT300 class session, the No. 7 Studie BMW M4 (Seiji Ara/Niklas Krutten/Bruno Spengler) recorded the top time of 1’43.060. Filling out the top three were the No. 61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT (Takuto Iguchi/Hideki Yamauchi/Shunji Okumoto) and the No. 20 SHADE RACING GR86 GT (Katsuyuki Hiranaka/Eijiro Shimizu). Of these three, No. 7 and No. 20 ran on Michelin tires and No. 61 ran on Dunlop, so it looks as if these two makes will be fast in the rain. However, finishing in 4th place running on Yokohama tires came the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Tatsuya Kataoka).

 

 

 

　This session brought all the official tests to an end. This leaves us only to wait for the start of the 2024 series with the AUTOBACS SUPER GT Opening Round at Okayama (April 13th and 14th).

 

 

 

　This morning, the dry session was a time when we were able to get some good times, but they were not as fast as they should be at this time of year, and looking at the other teams I got the impression that they weren’t getting very good times. Following our test menu, we ran a variety of tests. Until now, we have faced a series of difficult developments, but today both our cars No. 8 and No. 16 got good times, which was a big achievement. There are still some areas of the car’s performance that we are not satisfied with, so we have got more areas to make improvements in before Okayama.

 

 

　From the last rounds of last year’s season, we were finally able to win pole positions, and we were able to finish the two days of these tests maintaining that good condition. During these two days we completed a variety of tests on our menu, and by trying a number of new things, we were able to find both good and bad points, as well as making some new discoveries. Yesterday we discovered some things that helped us improve on one our weak points, namely our race pace. So, I think we will be able to compete well at Okayama.

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