【SUPER GT Round 1 / Okayama】

All three Yokohama-shoed GT500 cars make point finishes in bad weather.
Realize Corporation ADVAN GT-R leads them by finishing in fifth.

SUPER GT Round 1

Date	2019/04/13-14
Venue	Okayama Int’l Circuit
Weather	Rain
Surface	Wet
Race Lap	31Laps (1Lap = 3,703ｍ)

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The 2019 Super GT series had its first round of the year at Okayama International Circuit as usual in recent years. It consisted of eight rounds this year, visiting all major race tracks in Japan, and includes an event in Thailand as well.

Reflecting the huge popularity of the series, 44 cars in total – 15 for the GT500 class and 29 for GT300 – took part in the season opener. Yokohama Tire supplies its products to three GT500 cars, as it did last year, and 21 GT300 cars which means they are the great majority in the class field.

The qualifying session on Saturday was run on a completely dry track. For the first time at this circuit, the GT300 class cars were divided into two groups for Q1, and Takamitsu Matsui in Hoppy 86 MC became the fastest Yokohama-shoed driver in Q2 by securing the fifth grid.

As for the GT500 class, Realize Corporation ADVAN GT-R, run by Kondo Racing, performed well in Q1, as Jann Mardenborough at the wheel of the car set the third fastest time which was obviously good enough to make it to Q2.

But Sho Tsuboi in WedsSport ADVAN LC500 was tenth in Q1, just about 0.1 second shy of the cutoff for Q2. Hideki Mutoh in the driving seat of Motul Mugen NSX-GT was 11th and also missed out on a chance for going on to Q2.

In Q2, Mitsunori Takaboshi managed to set the sixth fastest time in Realize Corporation ADVAN GT-R. “We don’t really understand why the car runs better this weekend, so we need a deeper analysis about that. And we still have some areas to improve in terms of the car’s performance. We will continue to work on it,” he said.

It was rainy on the race day. However, the rain stopped when the cars took their grids before the start, so all teams had their discussions about what tires to put on the car to start with, taking account of the weather change during the race. In particular, the WedsSport team took five different sets of wet tires, including the set that was already put on the car, to choose from on the starting grid.

Because there was a lot of standing water on the track, the race began with the Safety Car start procedures and proper racing got underway from Lap 4. Motul Mugen NSX-GT with Mutoh at the wheel lost a position in a scramble immediately after the start of racing. But the Safety Car came out again due to an accident in the group behind him and, at the second restart on Lap 11, he managed to pass a car in front of him to regain 11th.

Starting from the tenth grid, Tsuboi in WedsSport ADVAN LC500 moved up to ninth shortly after racing started. He later said, “I was struggling in the early laps,” but, from Lap 5 on, he could pick up his pace gradually.

On Lap 13, there was a pile-up of GT300 cars, which forced the race control to stop the race with the red flag for about 45 minutes. After restart, Takaboshi’s Realize Corporation ADVAN GT-R began to struggle and lost its early pace because of mismatch between his tires and the amount of water on the track. This cost him a position on Lap 23 and Tsuboi who was running in eighth was closing the gap with him in a better pace.

On Lap 24, when Takaboshi was already within reach of Tsuboi, there was another accident and the Safety Car was deployed. Then the race control decided to stop the race again on Lap 31, as the weather would only be worse, and eventually not to restart.

So, the race ended. As the leading cars were penalized for an incident before the second and last red flag, Realize Corporation ADVAN GT-R was classified in fifth in the final result. For the same reason, WedsSport ADVAN LC500 and Motul Mugen NSX-GT were moved up to sixth and seventh respectively. This meant all Yokomaha-shoed cars made point finishes in the season’s opening round.

In the GT300 class, there was a shocking incident immediately after the Safety Car headed to the pit lane at the beginning of Lap 4. Kimiya Sato behind the wheel of Hoppy MC 86, running in fifth, spun at Turn 1 and he was hit by Yuya Hiraki in Advics Mach Syaken MC86 who was just behind him, which resulted in a double retirement of the leading Yokohama-equipped cars.

Consequently, Kazuki Hiramine in Realize Nissan Jidousya Daigakkou GT-R automatically moved up to fifth and the highest position among the Yokohama-shoed cars. He gained one more position on Lap 11 and tried to pull away from the cars behind but, unfortunately, the gap he built was nullified by the Safety Car periods once and again.

On top of this, Hiramine ran wide at Attwood Curve on Lap 23 when he was hit from behind and he lost two positions. But, as the car that hit him was given a penalty later, Realize Nissan Jidousya Daigakkou GT-R ended the race in fifth.