【SUPER GT Round 8 / Motegi】

Yokohama shoed car win back-to-back titles in GT300.
Taniguchi / Kataoka pair claims their third championship title.

SUPER GT Round 8

Date	2017/11/11-12
Venue	Twinring Motegi
Weather	Fine
Surface	Dry
Race Lap	53Laps (1Lap = 4,801m)

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After staging exciting races over seven months, the 2017 Super GT series had the eighth and final round at Twin Ring Motegi. Because the championships hadn’t been decided yet in both GT 500 and GT300 classes when the teams had headed into Motegi, what attracted the most of attention was naturally who would win the titles, aside from the interest of who would win this particular race.

Two things were different from other Super GT rounds this time: Firstly, all cars were allowed to run without handicap weights and, secondly, it was a 250km race, which meant 50km shorter than other non-long distance races.

So one could expect that the no tire change strategy might give more chances of victory for the Yokohama shoed GT500 crews, namely, Daiki Sasaki / Joao Paulo de Oliveira driving Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R, Yuhi Sekiguchi / Yuji Kunimoto in WedsSport ADVAN LC500, and Hideki Mutoh / Daisuke Nakajima in Motul Mugen NSX-GT.

As for the GT300 class, one of the leading Yokohama equipped crew, Nobuteru Taniguchi / Tatsuya Kataoka in Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG headed into this final round as the championship leader by nine points. This meant that, if they would finish the race in the first two places, they would secure the title. And if they would add a point for the pole position before the race, finishing in third would be enough to claim it, regardless of other cars positions.

On top of this, Goodsmile Racing & Team Ukyo, Taniguchi, and Kataoka knew how to make it very well from the past experiences of winning the championship two times. So they were in an advantageous position in this championship fight and there were high expectations for their third title crown.

The forecast had said the chances of rain would be high on Saturday, the qualifying day, but there were only a few drops of rain just before the official practice session and that was all. Therefore, the qualifying session was run on the dry track.

Although the sunlight wasn’t weak yet, the air temperature was quite low, telling that it’s already November, when Q1 for GT300 cars got underway. So all Yokohama shoed drivers warmed up their tires carefully, before they went into their qualifying attempts.

The fastest driver in Q1 was Taniguchi in Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG. He was a half-second faster than Kazuki Hiramine in Manepa Lamborghini GT3 who was in second and ended his qualifying attempt well before the checkered flag fell. Including these two, nine Yokohama shoed drivers made their way into Q2.

The Hatsune Miku car performed very well in Q2, too. Kataoka even bettered his teammate’s time by seven tenth and secured the pole position with a new course record. As explained before, they earned one valuable championship point and now had a ten-point advantage over their closest rival.< /p>

Surprisingly, this was Kataoka’s first ever pole position in his Super GT career. Among other Yokohama shoed drivers, Takamitsu Matsui in VivaC 86 MC ended the session in fourth and Sven Muller at the wheel of D’station Porsche in sixth. Paired with Tomonobu Fujii, the German’s performance looked promising, so a replay of the podium finish in the previous Thai round seemed to be well within their reach.

In the GT500 class, both Motul Mugen NSX-GT and WedsSport ADVAN LC500 failed to advance to Q2, as Muto in the former car was in 13th and Sekiguchi in the latter in 15th in Q1. On the other hand, the winning car of the third round of 2016 season at Motegi, Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R set the sixth fastest time by the hands of Sasaki, which was good enough to make it to Q2, and then Oliveira’s all-out attempt resulted in securing the fifth grid for the race.

On Sunday, the track was favored by good weather and the grand stand looked overcrowded, as 36,000 fans came to watch the season’s climax.

Looking for the chance to get on the podium, Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R started the race with Oliveira behind the wheel. But the Brazilian had to serve a drive through penalty soon after the start for overtaking under the red flag during the warm up session before the race. Then he hit another car at Turn 5 on Lap 6 and forced it to spin. The race control gave him another drive through penalty for this incident, so he lost a lot of ground in the early stage.

But Oliveira went on and changed to Sasaki at the end of Lap 32. At the end of the day, Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R finished the race in 12th, one lap down from the winner.

Sekiguchi drove WedsSports ADVAN LC500 for their first stint. Unlike their opponents who made pit stops early, he stayed out until Lap 24 before changing to Kunimoto. On his way to improve the position in the second half, however, Kunimoto crashed into a direct competitor at the exit of Turn 1 on Lap 39, because of a complicated situation caused by a mixed traffic with GT300 cars.

The front end of the car was severely damaged and the team had to retire the car while the driver managed to bring it back to the pit. But 38 laps they had done was enough to be classified in 15th.

Muto was at the wheel of Motul Mugen NSX-GT for the first 19 laps and handed the car to Nakajima. Unfortunately, they really had to struggle without any hope to challenge for a better position but they didn’t give up and finished the race in 11th.

Kataoka in the pole sitting Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG led the early stage of the GT300 class battle and Kenta Yamashita behind the wheel of VivaC 86 MC moved up to third. While the latter lost out the chance to win a back-to-back title, it was clear from Yamashita’s driving that the crew was determined to fight back in this final round.

But the fight between them, including a BMW M6 in second, didn’t last long, as Kataoka gradually pulled away from the other two. The AMG driver built a 6.2 second gap by Lap 11 but after that the gap began to shrink lap by lap. This prompted the Goodsmile team to change the driver earlier than others. On Lap 16, Kataoka came in to the pit and Taniguchi rejoined with four fresh tires.

On the next lap, VivaC 86 MC also made the stop and the team changed only two tires on the left-hand side for Matsui’s stint. This clearly paid off, as Matsui found himself running ahead of Taniguchi. However, the BMW M6 that was running in second in the early stage took a bigger gamble. They didn’t change any tire at the stop and managed to send the car back ahead of VivaC 86 MC!

And Matsui’s pace itself wasn’t as good as expected, so he was passed by another Mercedes AMG on Lap 32. When all GT300 cars completed the mandatory pit stops, Matsui was running in third, followed by Taniguchi.

Just keeping this order was enough for Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG to win the championship title but that wasn’t the way Taniguchi wanted to make it. He overtook VivaC 86 MC on Lap 39 and concluded the title race with a podium finish. Thus, Taniguchi / Kataoka pair won back the crown which they had grabbed in 2014 last time.

Matsui eventually finished the race in fifth, after giving way to Jono Lester in Gulf NAC Porsche 911. In the warm up session before the race, Lester’s teammate Kyosuke Mineo narrowly escaped a crash with a car which spun just in front of him. The lucky Porsche crew then did a great catch-up from the ninth grid to the fourth place.