【SUPER GT Round 6 / Suzuka】

TWS LM Corsa BMW Z4 wins long hot Suzuka 1000km.
Yokohama equipped cars sweeps GT300 podium.

SUPER GT Round 6

Date	August 30-31, 2014
Venue	Suzuka Circuit
Weather	Fine
Surface	Dry
Race Lap	173Laps (1Lap = 5,807ｍ)

• >>Report
• >>Result

The 43rd International Suzuka 1000km Race, the sixth round of the 2014 Super GT Championship Series, was held at Suzuka Circuit, Mie Prefecture, on August 30-31. The 173 lap race is of course the longest of the series and this long hot midsummer battle has become a regular fixture in the last weekend of the summer holiday season in this country. And this year’s race was marked by the maiden GT300 victory of TWS LM Corsa BMW Z4 in the Super GT series, which came along with a podium sweep by the Yokohama shoed cars in the class.

The weather was fine on Saturday. In the early minutes of Q1 for the GT300 class, Lucas Ordonez in B-Max NDDP GT-R set 2’00”398 which was good enough to put his name on the top of the time sheet until it was beaten by the faster time set by Subaru BRZ R&D Sport. At the same time, Koki Saga in OGT Panasonic Prius came up to fourth and Hiroki Yoshimoto at the wheel of TWS LM Corsa BMW Z4 in fifth but then the session was stopped by the red flag because of a halted car in the S curve section.

The Q1 was soon resumed for the remaining seven minutes but the top five cars at that time stayed in the pits. With no other car being able to threaten their positions, the five cars remained in their places and 10 Yokohama equipped cars made their ways into Q2. This didn’t include Goodsmile Hatsune Miku Z4, however, because Nobuteru Taniguchi struggled with the 96kg weight handicap　that his car had to carry and he ended the session in lowly 17th.

Immediately after the start of Q2, Morio Nitta in OGT Panasonic Prius set 1’59”955, which was the third fastest at the time, and he tried to improve still further. But his second attempt was interrupted by another red flag. After the restart of the session, Nitta actually bettered his previous time to 1’59”687 but it wasn’t just enough to improve his qualifying position. Kazuki Hoshino in B-Max NDDP GT-R finished the session in fifth and Akira Iida in TWS LM Corsa BMW Z4 in sixth.

In the Q1 session for the GT500 cars, Yuhi Sekiguchi and Michael Krumm drove WedsSport ADVAN RC F and D’station ADVAN GT-R respectively. While the time that Krumm set on his second flying lap, 1’49”886, was the fifth fastest at the time, and Sekiguchi clocked 1’49”941, both cars failed to go on to Q2, as the other cars further improved their times. D’station ADVAN GT-R qualified in 10th and WedsSport RC F in 12th.

The sky was overcast on Sunday but there was no rain throughout the day, so the race got underway at 12:24 pm on the dry track. As for the GT500 class, the starting drivers were Daiki Sasaki for D’station ADVAN GT-R and Sekiguchi for WedsSport ADVAN RC F. Steering himself away from the first lap melee, Sasaki managed to move up to eighth, while Sekiguchi kept the position where he started the race.

On Lap 11, however, Sekiguchi suddenly had a tire problem at the exit of 130R Corner when he was chasing Zent Cerumo RC F, which forced him to make an unscheduled pit stop. Sasaki gained one more position on Lap 15, as S Road Mola GT-R hit a problem and made a stop, so the GT-R driver had quite a strong race in the early stage. But he also had a similar tire problem on Lap 19 and had to crawl back to the pit.

But it was just the beginning of their hard times. WedsSport ADVAN RC F had the same problem on Lap 33 again, so did D’station ADVAN GT-R four laps later, and this meant their strategies were compromised.

On top of this, Juichi Wakisaka at the wheel of the WedsSport backed car went off the track at Spoon Curve and crashed into the barriers on Lap 62. Although he managed to bring the car back to the pit, the repair work took a very long time. Thanks to the team’s effort, the car actually rejoined the race but WedsSport ADVAN RC F wasn’t classified as a finisher because the number of laps it made until the finish fell short of the criteria. On the other hand, D’station ADVAN GT-R was forced to make as many as nine pit stops but the team’s never-give-up attitude led to finishing the race in ninth and earning championship points.

As for the GT300 class, Nitta in OGT Panasonic Prius kept the third place where he started the race for the first laps. Behind him, Ordonez at the wheel of B-Max NDDP GT-R was running in fourth after gaining a position and Yoshimoto in TWS LM Corsa BMW Z4 also came up to fifth on Lap 3.

But, as the Ordonez’s pace was becoming worse lap after lap, Yoshimoto was able to pass him on Lap 10 by just keeping a steady pace. Then he swiftly closed the gap with Nitta and overtook the Prius driver to move up to third on Lap 26. Now Yoshimoto looked unstoppable and he was running in second when he came into the pit to change to Iida on Lap 28.

The gap between the race leader and Iida remained constant for a while but, in the second half of his stint, his pace became relatively better than that of the leader. As a result, the gap was reduced gradually and Iida finally become the new race leader at Turn 1 on Lap 61.

Three laps later, Iida made a scheduled pit stop for driver change. And, when all GT300 cars had done their second stop, Yoshimoto found himself still in the lead. After that, ARTA CR-Z GT tried to close the gap with the race leading BMW Z4 for a few times but Yoshimoto was able to control it.

As ARTA CR-Z GT lost ground in the closing stage, due to a mechanical problem, now no one could threaten the TWS LM Corsa BMW Z4’s lead position. After two more driver changes, Yoshimoto to Iida on Lap 96 and then back to Yoshimoto on Lap 128, and thanks to a valuable behind-the-scene contribution from their back-up driver, Shinya Sato, TWS LM Corsa BMW Z4 claimed its maiden win in the Super GT series.

OGT Panasonic Prius, driven by Nitta/Saga/Yuichi Nakayama trio, took second place. After giving way to the eventual winner, Saga who drove for their second stint got ahead of Subaru BRZ R&D Sport and since then the crew maintained a good pace and didn’t make any major mistakes. They were followed by the Jorg Muller/Seiji Ara/Augusto Farfus trio’s Studie BMW Z4 which had steadily moved up through the field. This rounded out the podium sweep by the Yokohama shoed cars and, on top of this, Goodsmile Hatsune Miku Z4 regained the position of the championship leader, which the team had lost after the previous Fuji round, by finishing the race in fifth.