【SUPER GT Round 4 / Sugo】

Motul Mugen NSX-GT scores season’s best result.
Ferrari 488 GT3 comes in second and VivaC 86 MC get podium finish again in GT300.

SUPER GT Round 4

Date	2017/07/22-23
Venue	Sportsland SUGO
Weather	Rain
Surface	Wet
Race Lap	81Laps (1Lap = 3,704m)

• >>Report
• >>Result

The fourth round of 2017 Super GT Series was hosted by Sportsland Sugo in the fourth weekend of July when Japanese students’ summer vacation began.

There was a two-month break after the third round at Autopolis but the teams had two official test sessions at Sugo and Suzuka, as well as a tire manufacturers’ testing session, during the break. So hey were fully ready for this Sugo round hopefully with even better tires and car setups.

The weather forecast had said the chances of rain during the race weekend was quite high. But, as of Saturday at least, the track was completely dry while it drizzled a little just before the qualifying session began.

Q1 for GT300 had to be interrupted by the red flag due to a halted car when everybody was about to go for the first proper qualifying attempt. Then, during the closing minutes of the restarted session, Shintaro Kawabata at the wheel of UpGarage Bandoh 86 set the second fastest time, followed by Kenta Yamashita in VivaC 86 MC in third.

Among nine Yokohama shoed cars that went on to Q2, Takamitsu Matsui in VivaC 86 MC managed to complete a near perfect qualifying lap in his last attempt and secured the pole position for two races in a row. UpGarage Bandoh 86 came in second by the hands of Yuhki Nakayama. Hiroki Yoshimoto driving Synthium LMcorsa RC F GT3 finally made the most of the new car from this year, after struggling two years with the older model, and was the third fastest in Q2.

In the GT500 class, all of three Yokohama shoed cars got through to Q2. The fastest among them in the second session was Yuji Kunimoto in WedsSport ADVAN LC500. After securing the fourth grid for the race, he said, “As the Yokohama tires are suited to this circuit, the feeling was better than the last three races,” showing confidence with his voice.

Hideki Muto driving Motul Mugen NSX-GT was fifth and Joan Paulo de Oliveira at the wheel of Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R was sixth in Q2 respectively. So good results in the race seemed to be well within reach for all of three Yokohama equipped cars.

It rained quite steadily on Sunday. Its intensity varied but it actually stopped when the race was about to start, so it was really hard for everyone to choose the right tires to start with. Then, as rain drops came back just before the start of the formation lap, Motul Mugen NSX-GT picked the wet tires, while the other two, WedsSport ADVAN LC500 and Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R, chose the dry tires, hoping the track would get drier after the start.

But it was still too wet to drive with the dry tires. As a result, Yuhi Sekiguchi in the WedsSport backed car went off at the first corner after the start because he couldn’t reduce the speed enough to make it. Daiki Sasaki at the wheel of the Forum Engineering car also struggled and lost a lot of ground in the first few laps.

Nevertheless, they stayed out on the track because, to avoid making an extra pit stop which would ruin their race, they wanted to continue until Lap 27, which meant one third of the race distance. But the track conditions didn’t get any better, so Sekiguchi had to come in to get the wet tires on Lap 10 when he was already two laps down from leaders. And Sasaki followed the same path six laps later to fight back during the remaing laps.

Meanwhile, Motul Mugen NSX-GT with Muto at the wheel made a good start and moved up to second in the heat of the battle for the lead position by Honda drivers. He soon lost the position and fell back to third but the pace was still very good as he continued. However, as the track gradually got drier, Muto’s pace started to drop, which kept him away from racing aggressively in the second half of his stint.

On Lap 32, Sasaki in Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R made his second pit stop to change to Oliveira. Since the rain had already stopped at the time, the team put the dry tires on the car. But only two laps later, the Brazilian lost control of the car when he ran over a wet patch just before the last corner, which resulted in going off the track and crashing into the barriers. Fortunately, Oliveira could walk away from the damaged car but had to end the race at the spot. It was their first retirement of the season.

WedsSport ADVAN LC500 visited the pit on Lap 37 and the team sent out Kunimoto to the track with the dry tires. But there was already a massive gap with the leading cars, so all he could do was finish in 12th, four laps down from the winner. This meant that the team’s run of consecutive point finish finally ended after 21 races.

Muto in Motul Mugen NSX-GT made the mandatory pit stop on the same lap with the WedsSport car to change to Daisuke Nakajima. His pace was good enough to challenge to the cars ahead of him but it didn’t last long. As was the case with his teammate, Nakajima’s pace dropped in the second half of his stint and he finished the race in sixth. While the finishing position was lower than where the car started, this was still the best result of the season for them.

In the GT300 class, almost all cars started the race with the wet tires, with only a few exceptions. The early leader was Yamashita in VivaC 86 MC, followed by other Yokohama shoed drivers, such as Nakayama in UpGarage Bandoh 86, Akira Iida in Syntium LMcorsa RC F GT3 and Kazuki Hoshino at the wheel of B-Max NDDP GT-R which started the race from the fifth grid

But Nakayama soon fell back due to contact with a GT500 car. Then, with the rain getting heavier for a while, Yokohama shoed drivers’ relative pace became a little bit worse. As a result, Yamashita had to give way to his main opponent on Lap 20 and eventually came down to sixth.

In the middle stage of the race, there were two Safety Car periods. And it was Morio Nitta in Ferrari 488 GT3 who made the most of them, as he made the pit stop to change to Akihiro Tsuzuki at the best possible timing. Thanks to this, the Ferrari that had been running in tenth jumped up to the effective class leader on Lap 46!

Five laps later, Tsuzuki was passed by an opponent but he was still in second when all the cars completed the mandatory stops. At that time, he was followed by Nobuteru Taniguchi at the wheel of Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG and Matsui in VivaC 86 MC in third and fourth. Soon the latter two drivers began an intense battle for the third place.

On Lap 64, Matsui successfully made a bold but clean move on Taniguchi at Turn 1 and 2 to come up to third. By defending the position until the checkered flag fell, the VivaC 86 MC crew got on the podium for two races in a row and remained to be the championship leader with a six-point gap.

After having retired first three races this season, Nitta and Tsuzuki finally finished the race and cerebrated it on the podium. Especially for Tsuzuki, this was the long-awaited first podium since the second round of 2011 season at Fuji.