【SUPER GT Round 2 / Fuji】

WedsSport ADVAN RC F adds championship points by finishing in 7th.
B-Max NDDP GT-R takes second in GT300 after a dramatic race.

SUPER GT Round 2

Date	2015/05/02-03
Venue	Fuji Speedway
Weather	Fine
Surface	Dry
Race Lap	110Laps (1Lap = 4,563ｍ)

• >>Report
• >>Result

In the midst of the Golden Week national holidays, a large crowd of 91,500 race fans enjoyed the exciting battles of GT cars on sunny days, as the second round of Super GT series, Fuji GT 500km Race, was held at Fuji Speedway on May 2-3.

Eight Yokohama shoed GT300 cars, led by Haruki Kurosawa in Leon SLS who was the second fastest in Q1, earned their slots for Q2 in the qualifying session. Among them, Mitsunori Takaboshi at the wheel of B-Max NDDP GT-R clocked 1’37”028 and secured the second grip for the race, despite the fact it was the first time for him to make a qualifying attempt in Q2. Kurosawa’s partner, Naoya Gamou, ended the session in fifth. Takamitsu Matsui, who is a rookie in this series, in VivaC 86 MC set the seventh fastest time in his first ever Q2 attack and narrowly beat Nobuteru Taniguchi’s Goodsmile Hatsune Miku SLS.

In the GT500 class, D’station ADVAN GT-R’s first attacker, Daiki Sasaki, was sixth in Q1 by setting 1’28”849 and then Lucas Ordonez bettered it to fifth by driving around the track two tenths of a second faster than his partner. On the other hand, though, Yuhi Sekiguchi’s Q1 qualifying time in WedsSports ADVAN RC F, 1’29”616, wasn’t good enough to make its way into Q2.

The weather was good and the sky was almost clear on Sunday. All on-track activities, including the demonstration run by the Shizuoka prefectural police department’s police cars and motorcycles, went on time and the huge grand stand of Fuji Speedway was filled up with a multitude of spectators. Now came the time to start the 110 lap race..

WedsSport ADVAN RC F with Sekiguchi at the wheel started the race from the 15th grid but he slickly jumped up to tenth during the opening lap. While there was some ups and downs in his position, he consistently drove through two stints, 72 laps in total. The car eventually finished the race in seventh and added some championship points in its tally, since a team effort between Sekiguchi and his veteran partner, Juichi Wakisaka, worked really well.

Starting from the fifth grid, Sasaki in D’station ADVAN GT-R fell down to seventh after a slight collision with another car in the early stage but he regained a position soon and was in sixth when he came in to the pit to change to Ordonez. However, the damage caused by the collision was much worse than it had looked from the pit and it took longer than expected to make running repairs on the car’s bodywork. The Spaniard had to nurse the imperfect car for his stint and, after another driver change, Sasaki brought the car home to finish in 11th, just one place shy of a championship point.

By making a very good start, Kazuki Hoshino in B-Max NDDP GT-R moved up to second in the GT300 class and held the position for a while without allowing the race leader, Toyota Prius apr GT, to pull away from him. Then, as the leader’s pace gradually declined, Hoshino closed the gap quickly and overtook the Toyota. After the driver change, Takaboshi resumed the racing in third but came up to second soon after that. The unexpected happened when he was closing the gap with the leader at that time again.

The left-hand side front tire of his GT-R suddenly broke up at the end of the pit straight. Fortunately, Takaboshi managed to keep the car on the track and was able to drive back to the pit without causing any further damage to the car. After taking over the car at the stop, Hoshino pushed really hard to make up for the lost ground and was running in fourth when all GT300 cars had done their second pit stops. But he didn’t stop there. Hoshino regained two more positions by the penultimate lap and finished the race in second after all.

Among other Yokohama shoed cars, Goodsmile Hatsune Miku SLS and Studie BMW Z4 mostly spent the second half of the race in tandem. The situation remained the same even after the second driver change of each car, from Taniguchi to Tatsuya Kataoka in the case of the Hatsune Miku car and Seiji Ara to Jorg Muller for the BMW, so they ended the race in fifth and sixth respectively.