【SUPER GT Round 4 / Sugo】

Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R wins from ninth grid.
VivaC 86 MC finishes in second and becomes championship leader.

SUPER GT Round 4

Date	2016/07/23-24
Venue	Sportland Sugo
Weather	Cloudy
Surface	Dry
Race Lap	70Laps (1Lap = 3,704ｍ)

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The fourth round of the 2016 Super GT series, Sugo GT 300km Race, was held at Sportsland Sugo. The race track is located in the south of Sendai which is the largest city in the Tohoku area – the northeastern part of Japan mainland – and one can enjoy the view of Zao mountain range far off from there.

The trace is laid out in a mountain area itself, which means it has a lot of elevation changes and a thick forest around it. With its flat-out uphill final corner and a big braking area on a downhill, Sugo is known as one of most challenging race tracks in Japan, in terms of driving technics.

Because the third round at Autopolis had been cancelled in the aftermath of the big earthquake which hit Kumamoto area in April, there was a more than ten-week interval between the second race at Fuji and this Sugo round. The substitution event of Autopolis round is scheduled in the same weekend with the season finale at Motegi in November but, for the competitors, there were two official testing sessions in this ten-week space.

Notably, in the second testing at Sugo in mid-June, WedsSport ADVAN RC F (Yuhi Sekiguchi/Yuji Kunimoto) set the second fastest time and Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R (Daiki Sasaki/Masataka Yanagida) followed in fourth.

With an overcast sky above the track, the temperatures were slightly lower than expected, with the air temperature at 21 degrees Celsius and the track surface at 26, when the qualifying session got underway.

Led by the second fastest Hiroki Katoh in Syntium Apple Lotus which had shown a promising performance in the pre-event testing after receiving some new aerodynamic parts, nine Yokohama equipped cars qualified in the top 14 and got through to Q2. Generally, the JAF-GT cars, including Katoh’s Lotus and VivaC 86 MC in fourth with Takeshi Tsuchiya at the wheel, were faster in this class, just as expected.

On the other hand, the cars with heavier success ballasts struggled here because of a lot of elevation change. As this affected most severely the championship leading cars, Haruki Kurosawa in Leon Cvstos AMG-GT ended the session lowly in 20th and Kazuki Hoshino in B-Max NDDP GT-R in 22nd respectively.

The star in Q2 was VivaC 86 MC, as Takamitsu Matsui set the fastest time which was half a second faster than the rest of the field. His performance was good enough to strongly impress even his mentor Tsuchiya. Among other Yokohama shoed drivers, Yuki Nakayama in Upgarage Bandoh 86, which shares the same Mother Chassis with the VivaC backed car, was the fourth fastest in the session.

In the GT500 class, however, the two Yokohama equipped cars weren’t so lucky. Because of the other car’s crash and the red flag, Q1 stopped in the final minutes of the session and didn’t restart. This meant Sekiguchi in WedsSport ADVAN RC F couldn’t make a proper qualifying attempt before the red flag and had to settle for lowly 14th.

Yanagida in Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R had a gearbox problem in the session. And, to make the situation worse, his qualifying lap, in which he set very good time in the first sector, was also cut short by the red flag, so he narrowly missed to make his way into Q2 as well.

Although it was slightly drizzling when the cars were lining up on the starting grids on Sunday, everybody chose dry tires for the race.

On the third lap from the start, Yanagida had contact with the other car at the High Point corner and fell back to 13th. This was when Kondo Racing’s team manager, Masahiko Kondo, decided to opt for forgoing tire change at the pit stop which he called it “as a last resort.”

On Lap 26, the safety car came out for retrieving a crashed car on the track. And Yanagida was among the first to come in to the pit after the restart on Lap 30 to execute the strategy Kondo had in his mind. So Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R had only refueling and driver change to Sasaki at the stop and rejoined the race in sixth but Sasaki soon found himself in second when all other cars completed the mandatory driver change!

And he didn’t stop there. On Lap 47, Sasaki overtook the race leader at Rainbow Corner, as his opposition’s tires weren’t warmed up yet after its pit stop. The two cars fought for the lead position again in the closing stage and it allowed the other leading cars to close the gap with them because of the battle. But, with only five laps to go, there was another crash which caused the red flag and it was declared that the race was terminated.

Thus, Kondo Racing’s Yokohama shoed GT-R claimed the first victory since the last year’s fourth round at Fuji. The first thing Sasaki did after parking the car at Parc Ferme was running to Yanagida at the pit wall and hugging him, which was a heartwarming scene to watch for everyone.

WedsSport ADVAN RC F had a spectacular race too. Despite starting from the 14th grid, Sekiguchi overtook the cars in front of him one after another and, surprisingly, at the time of the first Safety Car period, he was already running in second! Opting for a late pit stop, Sekiguchi stayed out on the track until Lap 44.

So expectations for an outright win were high when Kunimoto got in the car. But the team took longer than usual to change tires before sending him out on the track and, as a result, he had lost a few positions during the pit stop.

Kunimoto’s pace was still very good but, when he just caught up the leading pack, the race suddenly – and unfortunately for him – ended by the red flag. Hence WedsSport ADVAN RC F was classified in fifth in the final result but a podium finish was well within reach if things went well for them. Yet the car’s continuous point finish record extended to 13 which is incredible.

In the GT300 class, the pole sitting VivaC 86 MC with Tsuchiya at the wheel led the race with almost ten second gap with the rest of the field at one time. He came in to the pit after the first Safety Car period to change to Matsui. The team changed only two tires on the left hand side during the stop but the air pressure of them wasn’t optimized for the track condition because the radio communication system had a problem, which meant the team didn’t know what the tire pressure value should be for the second stint.

For this, Matsui struggled to keep a good pace and Manepa Lamborghini GT3 which started from the ninth grid took over the lead, as the Lamborghini driver, Kazuki Hiramine, drove the longest possible stint within the rules before changing to Manabu Orido and, on top of this, the team didn’t change tires during the stop.

But, as the temperatures rose in the closing stage, Orido’s pace dropped significantly and he lost the lead position to the eventual race winner on Lap 63. On the other hand, Matsui in VivaC 86 MC came back to second two laps later. Jann Mardenborough in B-Max NDDP GT-R also moved up to fifth by overtaking Orido’s Lamborghini on Lap 70 but, soon after that, the race was stopped by the red flag due to a crash at the final corner. The race wasn’t resumed and the classification just before the red flag became the final result.