【SUPER GT Round 7 / Chang(Thailand)】

Perfect strategy gives D’station Porsche third place from 15th grid.
Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG becomes championship leader by securing second place.

SUPER GT Round 7

Date	2017/10/07-08
Venue	Chang International Circuit Thailand
Weather	Fine
Surface	Wet ～ Dry
Race Lap	66Laps (1Lap = 4,554m)

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• >>Result

The seventh round of 2017 Super GT series was hosted by Chang International Circuit, Buriram, Thailand, as the annual overseas meeting of the championship. As this was already the fourth time for the teams to race at the race track, they had a plenty of data and many drivers were familiar with the circuit.

And Yokohama shoed teams have always performed well there. Particularly, the Japanese rubber manufacturer was victorious in both GT500 and GT300 classes last year, thanks to WedsSport ADVAN RC F (Yuhi Sekiguchi / Yuji Kunimoto) in the former class and VivaC 86 MC (Takeshi Tsuchiya / Takamitsu Matsui) in the latter.

For the past three years, no session had been affected by rain but this year there was a squall on early Saturday morning and it came back just before the start of the official practice session. So, when the session began, the track was still very wet. But the strong sun in the South East Asian country quickly dried the track surfaces and the teams could send their cars out with slick tires in the session’s second half.

However, for the third time in the day, the track was hit by a squall when the teams were preparing for the qualifying session. And the rain was so heavy this time that the track became completely wet again…

Therefore, every car went out with wet tires for Q1 for GT300 but the lap times were getting better and better because the rain had already stopped when the session began. At the end of the session, Kazuki Hiramine in ManePa Lamborghini GT3 was fourth and the fastest among the Yokohama shoed drivers. He was followed by Jorge Muller behind the wheel of Studie BMW M6 and six Yokohama shoed cars in total made their way into Q2.

Then the track was wetted by rain again. As it wasn’t as heavy as the previous one, however, Seiji Ara in Studie BMW M6 and Nobuteru Taniguchi in Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG boldly went out with dry tires only to come back to their pit immediately because the track was too wet for the groove-less rubbers.

With the conditions becoming similar with the second half of Q1, Taniguchi at wheel of the Hatsune Miku liveried AMG managed to better his own time with the wet tires in the last minutes and ended the session in fourth which was the highest place among the Yokohama shoed cars.

“I am happy to get a grid ahead of our closest rival, Leon AMG. And the biggest challenge for us in this race is to finish the race ahead of VivaC 86 MC,” said Taniguchi, whose voice sounded somewhat relieved. Staying out with dry tires throughout the session, Kazuki Hoshino in B-Max NDDP GT-R set the sixth fastest time, followed by Manabu Orido driving ManePa Lamborghini GT3 in seventh, and Ara had to settle for a disappointing 11th.

But Matsui and Kenta Yamashita in VivaC 86 MC might be the most disappointed drivers in the class because Yamashita ended Q1 in lowly 19th. “We were tossed about by the rain but we will be strong if the track is dry tomorrow!” said Yamashita with confidence that they would fight back.

Normally, the GT500 drivers won’t go out on the track immediately after the session began because they want to choose the best timing to make an all out qualifying attempt. But, considering the chance of rain, all drivers went out as soon as the signal turned to green and eagerly tried to set a meaningful lap time from the first laps.

Three Yokohama shoed GT 500 cars also began their qualifying attempt early in the session but the lap times were below the level that the teams had hoped for. At the end of Q1 session, Joao Paulo de Oliveira in Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R was ranked tenth, Daisuke Nakajima in Motul Mugen NSX-GT as 12th, and Yuji Kunimoto behind the wheel of WedsSport ADVAN LC500 as 15th, so all of them failed to clear the hurdle for Q2.

On Sunday, the weather was fine during the warm up session in the morning. However, as soon as the cars sat on the starting grids, the rain began to fall and wetted the track entirely. And the fact that the rain had already stopped when the race was about to start made the team’s life difficult in choosing the tires to start with. In the Yokohama camp, Motul Mugen NSX-GT and Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R took the wet tires but WedsSport ADVAN LC500 switched to the dry tires in the last minutes.

The race control decided to take the Safety Car Start procedures but Forum Engineering ADVAN GT-R couldn’t leave the grid because of propshaft failure, so the car was pushed back to the garage. The team made repairs in a rush and sent the car out to the track when the race leaders already completed more than 30 laps. Using the rest of the race as a testing, Oliveira and Daiki Sasaki drove for 17 laps each but the 34 laps they made weren’t enough to be classified as a finisher in this 66 lap race.

WedsSport ADVAN LC500 with Kunimoto at the wheel started the race with the dry tires. However, he lost a lot of ground in his stint since it took much longer than anticipated to be dry enough for the tires they had chosen. Kunimoto changed to Sekiguchi on Lap 27 and the latter eventually brought the car home in 12th, which meant no championship point was earned.

Hideki Muto was at the wheel of Motul Mugen NSX-GT at the start and he drove for the first 25 laps with the wet tires. After the driver change, Nakajima tried hard to fight back but all he could do was finishing in 13th. It must be frustrating for them to leave Thailand without getting a point.

The tire choice was the key in the GT300 class, too, and the wet tires seemed to be the right one after all. In fact, almost all teams that had picked the dry tires were too slow on that particular conditions and began to be lapped by the leaders around Lap 10, which meant they were totally out of contention. But there was one exception. That was D’station Porsche.

Based on the intuitive decision of Team Principal and ex-MLB star baseball player Kazuhiro Sasaki, who said “I have a gut feeling that the slick is definitely the right choice,” they opted for the dry tires and the team’s starting driver Sven Muller drove in a comparable pace with the other car with the wet tires!

Then, as the track became drier, Muller’s lap times improved and he was faster by seconds than the car ahead of him. On Lap 22, D’station Porsche finally became the race leader from the 15th grid, as the others with the wet tires had to make their pit stop much earlier than usual. Muller continued to lead the race until Lap 40 when he handed the car to Tomonobu Fujii.

When the Japanese went out, he found himself running in third. The team gave him the same type of tires, but unfortunately for Fujii, they had already used up the fresh ones so he had to race with the used tires, which caused a severe understeer. The opponents behind him began to close the gap but, helped by a BMW M6’s mistake, Fujii narrowly managed to keep the position and D’station Porsche finished the race in third, which was a brilliant feat.

Meanwhile, Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG finished in second. Starting with the wet tires, Tatsuya Kataoka at the wheel of the car gained two positions by Lap 10 and came in to the pit on Lap 20. After changing to the dry tires, Taniguchi got in the car but, when he rejoined the race, probably because of their longer refueling time, a Lexus RC F which eventually became the winner had gotten ahead of him.

Taniguchi did everything he could, but he was quite unfortunate in dealing with back markers, so he wasn’t allowed to close the gap with the winner enough to put some pressure. Nevertheless, by securing second place, Taniguchi / Kataoka pair now became the championship leader by nine points. So they seemed to take a step closer to regaining the championship title.