This week is known as Golden Week in Japan, and with that many companies close down for the entire week, and most people take the entire time off as paid vacation. Which all sounds like an absolutely perfect time to fit a motor race in – and that’s exactly what Super GT do, with the Fuji 500km on Friday 4th May.

News Round-Up

If you haven’t seen the opening race of the series from Okayama yet, then I suggest you head on over to trl.tv where you can find the full race replay to watch at your leisure and catch up on what happened.

For the rest of you a quick recap of what happened – in GT500 the #17 Keihin Honda NSX took the teams first win in 7 years courtesy of Hirosuke Tsukagoshi and Takashi Kogure, with a strong second place the for the #100 Raybrig Honda NSX piloted by Naoki Yamamto and Jenson Button, who made a bold strategy of no tyre changes work for them to finish just 1.6s behind. Reigning Champions Nick Cassidy and Ryo Hirakawa rounded out the podium in their #1 KeePer TOM’s Lexus LC500, 5.6s back.

GT300 saw victory for the rather good-looking yellow and blue #18 UpGarage Toyota 86MC of Yuhki Nakayama and Takashi Kobayashi (no relation to the more well known Kamui), who also opted to run the race without a tyre change. 2nd was the #7 D’Station Porsche 911 GT3R piloted by Sven Muller and Tomonobu Fujii, with the final podium position going to Takamitsu Matsui and Sho Tsuboi in the #25 Hoppy Toyota MC86.

After Okayama the teams headed off to Suzuka for 2 days of official testing, where the #100 Raybrig Honda NSX ended all 4 sessions top of the timesheets, with Jenson Button setting a new unofficial lap record for GT500 in the process – although it’s worth remembering the official lap record will have been set in competition with the cars running the success ballast. Teammate Naoki Yamamoto would return to Suzuka a week later for Super Formula, where he would go on to take victory – the team is certainly looking strong.

Championship Standings + Weight Handicaps

As I’m sure you remember from the pre-season Dummies Guide, from round 2 onwards Success Ballast (known as “Weight Handicap”) is applied on the basis of 2kg per point earned.

GT500 Standings:

Position Number Team Tyre Driver 1 Driver 2 Points WH (kg)
1 17 Keihin NSX-GT Bridgestone Hirosuke Tsukagoshi Takashi Kogure 21 42
2 100 Raybrig NSX-GT Bridgestone Naoki Yamamoto Jenson Button 15 30
3 1 KeePer TOM’s LC500 Bridgestone Ryo Hirakawa Nick Cassidy 11 22
4 6 Waiko’s 4CR LC500 Michelin Kazuya Oshima Felix Rosenquist 8 16
5 23 Motul Autech GT-R Yokohama Tsugio Matsuda Ronnie Quintarelli 6 12
6 24 Forum Engineering Advan GT-R Yokohama Joao Paulo de Oliveira Mitsunori Takaboshi 5 10
7 3 Craftsports Motul GT-R Michelin Satoshi Motoyama Katsumasa Chiyo 4 8
8 38 Zent Cerumo LC500 Bridgestone Yuji Tachikawa Hiroaki Ishiura 3 6
9 19 WedsSport Advan LC500 Yokohama Yuji Kunimoto Kenta Yamashita 2 4
10 16 Motul Mugen NSX-GT Yokohama Hideki Mutoh Daisuke Nakajima 1 2

GT300:

Position Number Team Tyre Driver 1 Driver 2 Points WH (kg)
1 18 Upgarage 86MC Yokohama Yuhki Nakayama Takashi Kobayashi 20 40
2 7 D’Station Porsche Yokohama Tomonobu Fujii Sven Muller 15 30
3 25 Hoppy 86MC Yokohama Takamitsu Matsui Sho Tsuboi 11 22
4 65 Leon Cvstos AMG Bridgestone Haruki Kurosawa Naoya Gamou 8 16
5 11 Gainer Tanax GT-R Dunlop Katsuyuki Hiranaka Hironobu Yasuda 6 12
6 55 Arta BMW M6 GT3 Bridgestone Shinichi Takagi Sean Walkinshaw 5 10
7 88 Manepa Lamborghini GT3 Yokohama Kazuki Hiramine Marco Mapelli 5 10
8 0 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG Yokohama Nobuteru Taniguchi Tatsuya Kataoka 3 6
9 26 Taisan R8 Fukushima Yokohama Shinnosuke Yamada Shintaro Kawabata 2 4
10 50 Exe AMG Yokohama Masaki Kano Hideto Yasuoka 1 2

BoP Adjustments

Super GT is a BoP class, and series organisers GTA perform all BoP changes in association with SRO, who control the BoP for GT3 machinery in general. A few changes have been announced prior to Fuji:

 

Spec Car Min. Weight BoP Weight Boost Pressure
2018 GT3 Nissan GT-R 1285kg +15kg
2018 GT3 BMW M6 GT3 +20kg Adjusted
2018 GT3 Porsche 991 GT3-R +30kg
2017 GT3 Honda NSX GT3 +40kg Adjusted
2017 GT3 Lexus RCF GT3 +5kg
2016 GT3 AMG GT GT3 +20kg
2016 GT3 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 +55kg
2016 GT3 Audi R8 LMS GT3 +40kg
2016 GT3 Bentley Continental GT3 Adjusted
2015 GT3 Nissan GT-R +20kg Adjusted

Race Schedule

(All times Japanese Local)

Thursday 3rd May – 14:20 to 14:55 – Knockout Qualifying 1 (Q1)

Thursday 3rd May – 15:05 to 15:33 – Knockout Qualifying 2 (Q2)

Friday 4th May – 13:05 to 13:25 – Warm Up

Friday 4th May – 14:40 – Race (110laps) – LIVE on tRL TV.

Subscribe to tRL Notifications for notifications for live events. The race will be viewable on-demand on tRL TV afterwards.