2024.12.08

Rd. 5 Race GT500： Starting from Pole Position the au TOM'S GR Supra overcomes challenges to take a second straight win!

　The SUZUKA GT 300km RACE Grand Final, Round 5 of the 2024 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series took place in the afternoon of December 8th (Sun.) at Suzuka circuit (1 lap 5,807m X 51 laps) in Mie Prefecture. In this final round of the series held under fair skies, the No. 36 au TOM'S GR Supra that clinched its second straight GT500 class title in yesterday’s qualifying also took today’s race win from pole position. In the GT300 class, the No. 88 VENTENY Lamborghini GT3 (Takashi Kogure/Yuya Motojima) would lose position for a while after starting from pole position but eventually worked back brilliantly to take the win. With this, No. 88 came from behind to take both its first Drivers and Team championships in the GT300 class.

 

 

 

 

 

　This final race day of the season at Suzuka was held in winter weather with the air temperature at 13℃, but also with clear skies overhead. In the warm-up session before the start of the race, the No. 39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD GR Supra (Yuhi Sekiguchi/Yuichi Nakayama) collided with a GT300 car in an accident that brought out the Red Flag to stop the session, which caused the start to be delayed by 10 minutes until 12:50 in the afternoon.

　Before the start of the race, in what has become a SUPER GT tradition, a Traffic Safety Awareness Activities Parade Lap was held, led by seven police motorcycles and three patrol cars of the Mie Prefectural Police. After this, in consideration of the low track temperature, two formation laps were run before the 51-lap race began.

　Taking the lead at the start was the No. 36 au TOM'S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Kenta Yamashita) that had won Pole Position in the previous day’s qualifying, and in doing so had also clinched the 2024 season Drivers title. As the car’s first-stint driver, Tsuboi ran strongly in the lead. Behind him came the No. 17 Astemo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi/Kakunoshin Ohta) that had started from 2nd position on the grid and the No. 100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino), which had finished 5th in the qualifying but was moved up to 4th position on the grid due to the grid demotion of the No. 14 ENEOS X PRIME GR Supra (Kazuya Oshima/Nirei Fukuzumi), with the result being that a fierce battle continued between these contestants in the first half of the race.

　Running in 2nd position, car No. 17 was involved in a collision with a GT300 car at the Degner Curve of the 10th lap, which dropped it back to 5th position. As for the GT300 car, it ran off the track and hit the trackside barrier, which resulted in the declaration of the first Full Course Yellow (FCY) of the day.

　As a result of this accident, car No. 100 was able to move up to 2nd position, followed by the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #16 (Hiroki Otsu/Ren Sato) in 3rd position. Meanwhile, the No. 3 Niterra MOTUL Z (Mitsunori Takaboshi/Atsushi Miyake) that had started the race in 7th position and moved up to 4th by the 10th lap managed to catch and pass car No. 16 on the 130R the 16th lap to move into 3rd position.

　According to the regulations for this race, the 17th lap was the first opportunity for teams to make driver changes, and it was there that car No. 100 running in 2nd position decided to return to the pit. Taking this as a signal, the other cars of the GT500 class began returning to the pit one after another to refuel and make their driver changes. Among those who made their pit stop on the 18th lap, cars No. 3 and No. 17 were able to get back into the race ahead of car No. 100.

　The leading car No. 36 also made its pit stop on the 18th lap. And after changing drivers to Yamashita, it was able to effectively maintain its lead in the race when it returned to the track. But now it had car No. 3 charging in behind it to the point where it pulled up alongside No 36 on the out-side in the first corner of the 29th lap. But Yamashita was not going to give any ground and succeeded in preventing the overtake. It was then that a GT300 class car suffered machine trouble that brought it to a stop at trackside, which resulted in the second FCY call of the race. It was after the restart of the race from this FCY that car No. 3 attempted an overtake at the Degner Curve but ended up in a costly spin-out that dropped it back to 6th position.

　Once it succeeded in regaining 2nd position in this way, No. 17 continued to pursue the leading car No. 36 without losing ground. On the 48th lap, car No. 17 pulled up on the leader’s in-side at the Hitachi Astemo Chicane, but this move did not result in a overtake, as No. 17 overran and remained in 2nd position.

　After that, No. 36 gradually began to pull away from No. 17. In the end, No. 36 would take the checkered flag with a lead of 1.513 sec. With this, the No. 36 au TOM'S GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Kenta Yamashita) took its second straight win, following the one in the previous Round 8 MOTEGI, and bring its total of wins on the season to three.

 

 

 

 

 

　Finishing 2nd in the race was the No. 17 Astemo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi/Kakunoshin Ohta), and following remarkably in 3rd was the No. 12 MARELLI IMPUL Z (Kazuki Hiramine/Bertrand Baguette), which had started the race from the last position in the class after qualifying in 15th position. This car No. 12 had moved up to 12th position by the 2nd lap of the race, and then, due to a 5-sec. penalty to the No. 8 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT #8 (Tomoki Nojiri/Nobuharu Matsushita) for changing its engine, No. 12 found itself in 11th position. On the 4th lap, it went on to pass the No. 64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Takuya Izawa/Riki Okusa) to take 10th position, and after that the first-stint driver Baguette continued to steadily move up, passing the No. 19 WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra (Yuji Kunimoto/Sena Sakaguchi) on the 6th lap to move into 9th position.

　After the No. 12 team completed its pit work on the 17th lap and returned to the race, it stood in 5th position, after which the drop in position of car No. 3 moved it into 4th position. From there, the team’s second-stint driver, Hiramine, passed car No. 100 on the 41st lap to take 3rd position and a podium finish. In this way, the MARELLI organization that had backed up TEAM IMPUL for so many years was rewarded in this final race with a podium finish. The roots of MARELLI go back to the time when Nihon Radiator changed its corporate name to Calsonic and began supporting the then-active legendary driver Kazuyoshi Hoshino and entered what became the familiar blue-colored IMPUL Nissan machine in JGTC/SUPER GT. After a merger with the international corporation MARELLI, the tradition of the blue-colored machine continued. Unfortunately, however, that support relationship comes to an end as of this season.

　As for, Ronnie Quintarelli, who has announced his retirement from SUPER GT participation as of this season, in the No. 23 MOTUL AUTECH Z (Katsumasa Chiyo/Ronnie Quintarelli) that he drove in the first half of this race, he managed to bring it from an 11th position start up to 6th position before returning to the pit on the 18th lap. With this, Quintarelli’s SUPER GT participation came to an end. Car No. 23 then went on to finish the race in 8th place.

 

 

 

 

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