【SUPER GT Round 5 / Fuji】

WedsSport ADVAN RC F extends successive point finish streak to 14.
Manepa Lamborghini GT3 takes fourth in GT3 the by 6/1000 seconds.

SUPER GT Round 5

Date	2016/08/06-07
Venue	Fuji Speedway
Weather	Fine
Surface	Dry
Race Lap	66Laps (1Lap = 4,563ｍ)

• >>Report
• >>Result

For the fifth round, Fuji GT 300km Race, the 2016 Super GT series came back to Fuji Speedway for first time since the second round in May. Even though the track was same, the conditions in this mid-summer race were quite different from those of the last one in early summer, in terms of the temperatures etc. Even Mt.Fuji now looked a bit rougher with only bare rocks and no snow on the top of it.

The fine weather on the qualifying day meant even higher temperatures. The conditions were somewhat extreme in terms of temperatures, with the air at 33 degrees Celsius and the track surface at 50, when the qualifying session got underway.

Headed by Hiroki Kato in Syntium Apple Lotus in third overall, nine Yokohama shoed GT300 cars got through to Q2 for the top 14 cars in the class. This included Kota Sasaki in Toyota Prius apr GT, the chassis of which had been significantly improved, and Takeshi Tsuchiya at the wheel of VivaC 86 MC in 12th, despite carrying a huge 66kg weight handicap. On the other hand, Jan Mardenborough’s B-Max NDDP GT-R ended Q1 in lowly 17th and missed the cut to go on to the next section.

Building on Akihiro Tsuzuki’s impressive effort in his first ever qualifying attempt in Q1, a veteran Morio Nitta in JMS LM corsa 488 GT3 set the third fastest time in Q2, which was the fastest among the Yokohama equipped cars. Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG with Nobuteru Taniguchi at the wheel in Q2 sat on the fifth grid. The last two places were filled by the gentleman drivers, Hiroaki Nagai in Toyota Prius apr GT in 13th and Kazuho Takahashi in Syntium Apple Lotus in 14th, but their performances were remarkable and very comparable to those from the professional drivers.

Yuji Kunimoto, who was hoping for higher temperatures, put WedsSport ADVAN RC F in seventh in Q1 for GT500 and handed over a baton to Yuni Sekiguchi for Q2. Driving Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R in Q1, Daiki Sasaki narrowly beat Kunimoto’s best lap time and found himself in sixth at the end of the session.

In Q2, the two Yokohama shoed cars started their qualifying attempts earlier than others, with Sekiguchi and Masataka Yanagida at the wheel. Both of them properly warmed up the tires and successfully completed their qualifying laps. The results were quite good at that time but were beaten by some of their nearest rivals, so Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R ended the session in seventh and WedsSport ADVAN RC F in eighth.

But after the session, the car classified in sixth was demoted due to exceeding the track limit in its qualifying attempt. Because of this, Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R took over the sixth grid for the start of the race. “We chose the tires that are capable to go consistently even under very hot conditions, so we felt quite confident about the race. And, remember, we won the last race from the ninth grid!” said Yanagida.

The sky was clear on Sunday at Fuji Speedway and the temperatures were rising quickly. But the two Yokohama equipped GT500 teams rather welcomed it because they had picked the tires that focused on durability for the race. When the signal turned to green, Yanagida and Kunimoto at the wheels of Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R and WedsSport ADVAN RC F went flat out, with certain hope to have a good race for each.

However, they had to face unexpected outcomes. Despite losing a position in the first laps, Yanagida eyed the possibility of fighting back in the second half of his stint. But at the end of Lap 9, he suddenly brought the car back to the garage due to a problem with the engine. The team replaced a few engine parts before sending him back on the track but it didn’t fix the problem at all. Having no choice for Yanagida but returning to the pit again, the winner of Sugo round two weeks ago, Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R, had to end the race prematurely only after 11 laps.

Kunimoto in WedsSport ADVAN RC F performed well and moved up to sixth on Lap 9. But when the Safety Car came out on Lap 19, the team decided to make a stop earlier than the competition, as Kunimoto had been struggling with the tires that had a softer compound. On Lap 24, as soon as the Safety Car period ended and the pit lane was opened, he came in to change to Sekiguchi and the team gave him the harder tires during the stop for the second half of the race.

But an earlier stop inevitably meant a longer second stint. At the closing stage of his more than 40 lap stint, Sekiguchi started to have hard time with worn tires and eventually fell down to tenth where he finished the race. At the end of the day, WedsSport ADVAN RC F couldn’t better its grid position in the race but still it earned a championship point and extended its streak of consecutive point finishes to 14 races since the round seven in 2014.

In the GT300 class, Tsuzuki in JMS LM corsa 488 GT3 kept the third place for a while but he was captured by the professional drivers coming from behind one after another. In the process, he lost three places but he could settle down during the Safety Car period from Lap 17 for the GT300 class. His team chose to stay out for the SC period and Tsuzuki was running in sixth until he finally came in for the pit stop on Lap 30. But multiple mishaps during the stop caused a delay and the car had lost a lot of ground when Nitta rejoined the race.

Manepa Lamborghini GT3 with Kazuki Hiramine at the wheel was one of the last cars to make a mandatory pit stop and, before doing it on Lap 33, he became the interim leader for a few laps. The team, unlike the last round at Sugo, changed all four tires at the stop and Manabu Orido found himself running in fourth when he began the car’s second stint.

For the final laps, Taniguchi in Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG closed on Orido’s Lamborghini from behind and the two cars crossed the finish line almost abreast. But Orido just won the battle for fourth by only six thousandths of a second!

Leon Cvstos AMG-GT fought for fifth against Taniguchi’s AMG but retired the race on Lap 56 because of a mechanical problem on its suspension. The sixth place finisher was B-Max NDDP GT-R, which was surprising if you considered the car started the race from the 17th grid. Thanks to the relentless work from Mardenborough and Kazuki Hoshino, the car is still in second in the teams’ championship race. VivaC 86 MC forwent the tire change at the pit stop and the lead driver, Takeshi Tsuchiya, said “I think our race was not so bad,” but just couldn’t finish the race in points.