2024.10.20

Rd. 7 Qualifying GT300: In difficult track conditions, the UNI-ROBO BLUEGRASS FERRARI takes its first pole position!

Round 7 AUTOPOLIS CIRCUIT : Qualifying GT300

　 The Official Qualifying for the AUTOPOLIS GT 3 Hours RACE, Round 7 of the 2024 AUTOBACS SUPER GT took place on the morning of October 20th (Sun.) at AUTOPOLIS (one lap 4,674m) in Oita Prefecture. Originally scheduled for yesterday afternoon, the qualifying had to be cancelled due to bad weather and was re-scheduled to be held in one 30-session for each class this morning. In the GT500 class, the No. 24 REALIZE CORPORATION ADVAN Z (Tsugio Matsuda/Teppei Natori) won pole position. In the GT300 class, the No. 6 UNI-ROBO BLUEGRASS FERRARI (Yoshiaki Katayama/Roberto Merhi Muntan) won its first pole position in the class. In today’s race (starting at 1:20 P.M.), these two cars will start from the front positions of their respective class grids.

 

　Yesterday, October 19 (Sat.), the morning’s Official Practice had to be cancelled due to bad weather, and the in the afternoon, the Official Qualifying for Round 7 had to be cancelled as well. For this reason, the Official Qualifying was re-scheduled to be held as one 30-minute session from 8:30 in the morning of Race Day (October 20th (Sun.).

Instead of being held in the usual Q1 and Q2 sessions, this Official Qualifying would be run as one 30-minute session. Fog had settled in over the course this morning but based on driving images taken from the on-board car filming, it was determined that the view from the drivers’ standpoint was at a sufficient level for running. Then the cars took to the track as soon as it was opened. This marked the start of the first driving in Round 7.

However, the track was still wet, and the air temperature was a low 12℃ and the track temperature also low, at 13℃, which meant there was little improvement in the conditions. Naturally “WET” track condition was declared, which meant that the teams could choose wet-use tires. While most teams did so, the ranking leader, the No. 65 LEON PYRAMID AMG (Naoya Gamou/Takuro Shinohara/Haruki Kurosawa) chose to start the session on slick tires.

As the track surface conditions began to improve, so did the teams’ lap times, and about halfway into the session the No. 31 apr LC500h GT (Kazuto Kotaka/Jin Nakamura/Yuki Nemoto) recorded a time of 1’49.44. Recording the second fastest time was the No. 20 SHADE RACING GR86 GT (Katsuyuki Hiranaka/Eijiro Shimizu), and in third position stood the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNEMIKU AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Tatsuya Kataoka).

 

 

 

 

 

　While some cars changed to slick tires, but perhaps because of the time it took to verify the degree of matching with the track conditions and the time needed for warming up the tires, they showed no immediate improvement in their times. Conversely, there was a problem with spinning out or running off the track for a number of cars. It was with about 7 minutes left in the session, car No. 4 ran off the track and crashed. There was some damage to the car’s front end, and it came to a stop. Although it was able to get back on the track under its own power, the Red Flag was shown and the session brought to a halt.

Soon the session was restarted. However, with just about 6 minutes remaining in the session the teams were quick to get back on the track and running all at once. This made for heavy traffic (congestion) on the track, but soon the No. 96 K-tunes RC F GT3 (Morio Nitta/Shiichi Takagi) was the first to dip under the 1’50 mark with a time of 1’49.187 and take the top spot. Next came de Oliveira in the No. 56 REALIZE NISSAN MECHANIC CHALLENGE GT-R (Daiki Sasaki/João Paulo de Oliveira) with a time of 1’47.322 to beat the that top time by a big margin. After this the other cars also began to improve of their lap times one after another.

Finally, in the checkered flag lap, more teams bettered their own best times, and in the end, it was Roberto Merhi Muntan in the No. 6 UNI-ROBO BLUEGRASS FERRARI that recorded a time of 1’46.524. This gave the Ferrari 296GT3, as well as Muntan and Katayama their first pole position in the GT300 class.

Finishing 2nd and 3rd in the qualifying were car No. 56, which improved its time to 1’46.785, and Fujii in the No. 777 D'station Vantage GT3 (Tomonobu Fujii/Charlie Fagg).

 

 

 

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