【SUPER GT Round 8 / Motegi】

Goodsmile Hatsune Miku SLS captures second-place finish in GT300.
WedsSport ADVAN RC F becomes only GT500 car to score points every round.

SUPER GT Round 8

Date	2015/11/14-11/15
Venue	Twinring Motegi
Weather	Cloudy / Fine
Surface	Wet / Wet
Race Lap	53Laps (1Lap = 4,801ｍ)

• >>Report
• >>Result

The eighth and final round of the 2015 Super GT series, Motegi GT 250km race, was held at Twin Ring Motegi which was surrounded by colorful autumn leaves with a cold wind signaling the oncoming of winter. Only for this season finale, all cars were allowed to run without any handicap weight. So, this round was the outright test of the true performance potential of competing drivers, cars, and tires.

As the track surfaces were wet all round, all competitors used wet tires for their qualifying attempts. In the GT300 class, Goodsmile Hatsune Miku SLS was the top Yokohama shoed car, with Tatsuya Kataoka setting the third fastest time in Q2, gaining three positions from Nobuteru Taniguchi’s sixth fastest in Q1. It was followed by VivaC 86 MC which was driven by Tatsuya Tanigawa, who stood in for injured Takamitsu Matui and did a great job again this time, and then Takeshi Tsuchiya for Q2.

ManePa Lamborghini GT3 secured the fifth grid with the driving pair of Manabu Orido for Q1 and Kazuki Hiramine for Q2, accompanied by the Yuya Sakamoto/Kenta Yamashita pair in Excellence Porsche on the next and sixth grid. In total, eight out of 13 cars that advanced to Q2 were equipped with Yokohama tires in this round.

When Q1 for the GT500 class was about to start, the rain was getting heavier, even though it had once looked to be easing off. Because of this, Daiki Sasaki in D’station ADVAN GT-R wanted to go out to the track to make a qualifying attempt as soon as possible, before the surface became too wet. So he left the garage just on the signal to start the session but every driver thought the same thing. As the team was allocated the garage that was close to the pit entry, not the exit, Sasaki had to wait in a queue to get to the pit exit… As a result, when he completed a proper qualifying lap, the track conditions were much worse than that the first cars in the queue faced. Consequently, he had to settle for only in 11th , which meant D’station ADVAN GT-R failed to make its way into Q2 quite unexpectedly.

In sharp contrast with Sasaki’s misfortune, the garage that WedsSport ADVAN RC F resided in was much closer to the pit exit. The fact obviously helped Yuhi Sekiguchi to go out to the track relatively earlier and, ultimately, to set the eighth fastest time that was just enough to get through to Q2. While Juichi Wakisaka couldn’t improve the grid position even with his all out drive in the heavier rain, the veteran was still quite confident about the race, because the car gave him a very positive feeling. Therefore, one could expect the catching-up game of both Yokohama shoed cars on Sunday.

The rain stopped early on Sunday morning. The track surface was still wet when the time to start the race approached but it looked to be drying over time. To provide additional track time to the competitors to try the dry tires, for the first time in this weekend, it was decided to start the warm up run ten minutes earlier than originally scheduled and to extend the session to 18 minutes, whereas it was normally run for 8 minutes. In this session, however, the cars on wet tires were still faster than those on slicks, so it didn’t make the teams’ tire choice for the race any easier.

All teams were prepared for the last minute tire change between the wet and dry but, when the cars lined up on the grids, a brief shower came. As it didn’t last long but the amount of rain wasn’t negligible, all teams inevitably chose to start the race with the wet tires.

Sekiguchi was on board WedsSport ADVAN RC F and Michael Krumm was behind the wheel of D’station ADVAN GT-R at the start. They completed the opening lap in seventh and ninth respectively but began to lose positions gradually, as the amount of water that wetted the track surfaces reduced. To break the neck of it, Krumm made an early pit stop on Lap 20 and Sekiguchi did the same three laps later to change to the dry tires, soon after they had completed the minimum number of laps that the rules required. D’station ADVAN GT-R rejoined the race with Sasaki at the wheel and WedsSport ADVAN RC F with Wakisaka.

Once the track got dry, both cars showed a good pace and some good results seemed to be within their reach. When the 53 lap race was hitting the halfway point, however, the Safety Car was deployed to help the course marshals’ work to clear up debris from a crashed car and, because of the relative positions among the Safety Car, the race leader and the two Yokohama shoed cars, the gap between the race leaders and them suddenly expanded in that moment.

This obviously marred their catching up in the second half of the race. As a consequence, WedsSport ADVAN RC F was in tenth and D’station ADVAN GT-R in disappointing 12th, when the checkered flag fell, but the former’s tenth place finish meant the car ended the season as the only car that scored at least a point in every single round.

Even though the end results were somewhat disappointing, the pace of both cars on the drying track was impressive and Wakisaka actually marked the fastest lap of the race. Therefore, it was certain that their performance in this race was a promising sign for the next season.

In the GT300 class, Kataoka in Goodsmile Hatsune Miku SLS made a good showing immediately after the start, moving up to second at the first corner. On the other hand, Kazuki Hoshino in B-Max NDDP GT-R, which started the race from the 15th grid but might well be able to move up during the race, was hit from behind by another car and was forced to retire prematurely. The B-Max car’s crew had had a possibility to finish the championship in second until then but they had to leave the circuit even without fighting for that.

Orido, behind the wheel of ManePa Lamborghini GT3, completed the first lap in fourth, only to be given a drive through penalty on Lap 9. It was due to an overtaking under the yellow flag during the warm up run before the race and caused him to lose a lot of ground.

As the track was getting dry, Kataoka’s pace began to slow and he had to step down to third on Lap 10. As with other drivers who came in to the pit earlier than planned to switch to the dry tires, he also made a stop for the slicks and changed to Taniguchi on Lap 23. It was only a few laps later when the Safety Car came out. He was still running in third at the time but then came up to second because the race leader made the pit stop during the Safety Car period.

When racing resumed, there was only one car, Gainer Tanax SLS, in front of Taniguchi. After making a perfect restart when the Safety Car pulled our, he took just three laps to overtake their main rival. But, when Toyota Prius apr GT came back from behind in way faster pace than those of any other in the class, the difference in pace was too much to handle for him. Taniguchi could do nothing but give way to the Toyota on Lap 39 but, without being threatened by anyone else after that, he could brought Goodsmile Hatsune Miku SLS home safely in second which was their season’s best result.

As for the other Yokohama equipped cars, the Haruki Kurosawa/Naoya Gamou pair steadily drove their Leon SLS to finish in fifth, after starting from the tenth grid. Despite a drive through penalty in the early stage, ManePa Lamborghini GT3 finished the race in seventh by making a remarkable recovery from 12th, the car’s position when it had served the penalty.