Eight Is Great on 8/8 – ARTA Honda NSX Wins Pole Position At Fuji
Perhaps it was meant to be that the number 8 car would be the fastest on the 8th day of the 8th month – and Tomoki Nojiri and his #8 ARTA Honda NSX-GT were plenty great as he went on to capture pole position for the second round of the 2020 Autobacs Super GT Series at Fuji Speedway.
The one-lap pace of the front-engined NSX-GT isn’t in doubt, as demonstrated by a front-row lockout in Saturday qualifying. Now the attention now turns to what they can do in Sunday’s 66-lap race, and what if anything they’ve learned to cure the long-run pace woes that were ailing them three weeks ago at this very circuit – caused predominantly by the tyre pick-up phenomenon that made the Hondas unstable over long green-flag stretches.
The first stage of qualifying proceeded without incident, and the #100 Raybrig NSX-GT of Tadasuke Makino led the way in Q1, just as he did in Saturday morning’s Practice session. Whether it was strictly down to the hotter temperatures, whether it was down to the tyre compound selections for the weekend, or whether it was because this was the first race where Success Ballast was used, the times seemed to be a good second slower in GT500 than they were three weeks ago at the same circuit in the opening round. But it was still a battle to get into the top 8 in Q1 and advance into Q2.
3 Toyota Supras, 3 Honda NSXes, and 2 Nissan GT-Rs ended up advancing into Q2 – but there were a couple of surprises as to who didn’t make it through. Granted, if you’d told Nick Cassidy that he and fellow championship leader Ryo Hirakawa wouldn’t have advanced into Q2 this weekend, he’d have been correct in his premonition before the weekend that the 42 kilogramme Success Ballast handicap would have cost them enough time over a single lap to make a big difference. Hirakawa missed the cut by a tenth of a second, and he and Cassidy will start 10th tomorrow in their #37 KeePer TOM’s GR Supra.
The other surprise was the #38 ZENT GR Supra of Yuji Tachikawa and Hiroaki Ishiura – with Ishiura missing out on Q2, qualifying 11th in a race they’d been tipped as one of the favourites to win, at a track where both drivers have enjoyed a plethora of success.
As is often the case in Super GT qualifying, fans watching from home were left to wait until the final minutes before the real attack laps. With two minutes to go, the #8 ARTA NSX of Nojiri burst through to the top of the leaderboard with a 1’27.300, with Koudai Tsukakoshi just behind in the #17 Keihin NSX. Tsukakoshi was able to find a few hundredths on his next lap, but remained 0.159 seconds adrift of Nojiri, who claimed his sixth career GT500 pole position for he and teammate Nirei Fukuzumi – their second straight front-row start of the season, leading the Keihin NSX of Tsukakoshi and Bertrand Baguette that will line up 2nd.
“In Q1, we weren’t able to get the car to perform at its full potential,” said Nojiri, who came within hundreths of a second from missing Q2. However, Fukuzumi-san pointed out where we needed to improve the car accurately, so when I drove in Q2, I had no complaints about the car. I’d like to thank the team and Honda, and all the people who have supported us, for making the car this good. In the opening round, Fukuzumi set a track record in Q1 – but I was a little slower than him in Q2, and I missed out on the pole. I experienced the frustration of losing to my teammates, and I came to the second round to push myself. I think everything we’ve been doing up to this point has paid off.”
“But winning the race is most important, so I’ll fight alongside Fukuzumi, the team and everyone else to remain up front,” he added.
Best of the Toyotas was the #39 Denso Kobelco SARD GR Supra of Yuichi Nakayama and GT500 newcomer Sena Sakaguchi, qualifying 3rd after a great Q2 run from the 21-year-old Sakaguchi – who’s hoping to make the most out of his role as “super-sub” for the absent Heikki Kovalainen, and Kovalainen’s previous substitute, Kenta Yamashita.
Qualifying also saw a desperately needed boost for the Nissan camp. The #12 Calsonic Impul GT-R (Daiki Sasaki/Kazuki Hiramine) qualified 4th fastest, which included a 3rd place result in Q1 for Hiramine in his first-ever time attack in GT500. Following them was the #23 Motul Autech GT-R (Tsugio Matsuda/Ronnie Quintarelli), the only car not on Bridgestone tyres that advanced into Q2.
Making up the rest of the first four rows are the #36 au TOM’s Supra of Yuhi Sekiguchi and Sacha Fenestraz – Sekiguchi suffered with lockups on his flying lap and only managed 6th – the #100 Raybrig NSX of Makino and Naoki Yamamoto 7th, and the #14 Wako’s 4CR Supra of defending champion Kazuya Oshima and Sho Tsuboi in 8th. Just three-quarters of a second covered this entire top 8 in Q2!
Over in the GT300 class, much has been made about the new mandatory four-tyre exchange pit regulations that are in place for this round and for Round 3 at Suzuka Circuit in two weeks’ time, and how it would affect the JAF-GT300 and Mother Chassis vehicles. It hasn’t affected them in qualifying – as the black and gold #6 Advics muta Toyota MC86 will start on pole position in just its second race, thanks to a first career pole position from 21-year-old rookie Kazuto Kotaka.
Kotaka, making just his fourth Super GT appearance, banged in a 1’36.270 with just over 3 minutes left in the Q2 session – getting him within 0.034s of the GT300 pole lap set in Round 1, and securing the top spot in qualifying for himself and senior journeyman co-driver Ryohei Sakaguchi.
Having previously worked behind the scenes for the likes of K-Tunes Racing through 2019, INGING Motorsport just collected their first pole position as an independent GT300 entry. Their MC86, purchased second-hand from what is now arto Ping An Team Thailand, had seldom come close to the front row when it was last in use three years ago!
Kotaka didn’t know he’d claimed pole position at first, as he explained in a post-qualifying interview on TV: “I couldn’t hear the radio signal, so I didn’t know what position I was in when I got out of the car. This interview made me realize that it was my first pole position, and I’m very happy. Ryohei-san and I have been working on the car since the start of pre-season testing and today the car was finally comfortable to drive. I’m thankful for Ryohei-san and the team. I’ll use the confidence of the pole position we got, and aim to win the race as well.”
After a dismal qualifying in Round 1, Round 2 was kinder to the #55 ARTA Honda NSX GT3 of defending champion Shinichi Takagi and rookie Toshiki Oyu – who qualified second, ahead of yet another Mother Chassis car, the #2 Syntium Lotus Evora MC of Hiroki Katoh and Masataka Yanagida in third. The Lotus was fastest in Practice, and fastest in Group B during Q1, where the fastest eight of 15 cars in each group advanced into GT300 Q2.
The #61 Subaru BRZ R&D Sport of Takuto Iguchi and Hideki Yamauchi led Group A in Q1, and finished 4th in Q2, making it three JAF-GT300 or MC cars inside the first two rows. Fifth-fastest was the #65 LEON Pyramid Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Naoya Gamou/Togo Suganami), the car that won pole in Round 1. And a pleasant surprise in sixth, was the #360 RunUp Rivaux Nissan GT-R GT3 (Takayuki Aoki/Yusaku Shibata), making its best start in a year since qualifying 3rd at last year’s Fuji 500 Miles!
The #5 Mach Syaken GTNET MC86 (Natsu Sakaguchi/Yuya Hiraki) qualified a strong 7th, in 8th was the #56 Realize Nissan Gakuen GT-R (Kiyoto Fujinami/João Paulo de Oliveira). Ninth-quickest – despite a massive 60kg Success Ballast handicap – was the #52 Saitama Toyopet GreenBrave Toyota GR Supra (Hiroki Yoshida/Kohta Kawaai), our most recent GT300 winners starting next to the #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Tatsuya Kataoka) in 10th.
The #34 Modulo Kenwood NSX GT3 (Ryo Michigami/Jake Parsons) qualified 11th, the #244 Takanoko-no-Yu Lexus RC F GT3 (Rintaro Kubo/Atsushi Miyake) was a late addition to Q2 after the #18 UPGarage NSX GT3 had its fastest lap deleted due to a track limits infringement, and qualified 12th. The #30 Toyota GR Sport Prius PHV GT (Hiroaki Nagai/Manabu Orido) was a strong 13th, the #9 Pacific NAC D’station Aston Martin Vantage GT3 (Tomonobu Fujii/Kei Cozzolino) 14th, the #21 Hitotsuyama Audi R8 LMS (Shintaro Kawabata/Tsubasa Kondo) 15th, and with brake issues throughout Q2, the #31 Toyota Prius (Koki Saga/Yuhki Nakayama) settled for 16th.
The two Gainer Nissan GT-Rs that finished 2nd and 5th in class in Round 1, fared poorly in Q1 this time out: The #10 TanaX Itochu Enex with Impul GT-R (Kazuki Hoshino/Keishi Ishikawa) will start 19th, and the #11 Gainer TanaX GT-R (Katsuyuki Hiranaka/Hironobu Yasuda), on +45kg, starts 20th.
Round 2 of the 2020 Autobacs Super GT Series will be live on The Race’s YouTube channel, with Sam Collins and Rob Barff on comms – starting at 4:50 AM BST / 5:50 AM CEST.
GT300 Qualifying results – GT300 QUALIFYING RESULTS
Images courtesy of the GT Association