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.