Sakaguchi Unstoppable As TGR Team WedsSport Bandoh Collects Hat Trick of GT500 Poles

The pole positions just keep on coming for the blue and gold #19 WedsSport Advan Toyota GR Supra of Yuji Kunimoto and Sena Sakaguchi. In qualifying for the Autobacs SUPER GT Series Fuji GT 100 Lap Race, Sakaguchi took his second pole of the season, giving TGR Team WedsSport Bandoh their third pole in a row.

Fuji Speedway hosts its second 450km “semi-endurance” race of the season this weekend, and the cloudy skies and relatively mild temperatures throughout the day were a surprise to many of the teams. There was even fog and heavy rain in the morning, resulting in a wet start to the official practice session earlier that day. But by the start of qualifications at 15:00 JST, the track had completely dried out.

Still, the low surface temperatures meant that the drivers’ process of gradually building heat into the tyres over a ten-minute session was harder. GT500 Q1 was a particularly tough session, with just 0.833 seconds covering all 15 cars, and 0.267s covering the top nine – with only eight cars advancing. The agony of being the last one behind the cut line fell to the #100 Stanley Honda NSX-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino), the fastest Honda in Practice. However, a last-minute attack from the #8 ARTA NSX-GT of Nirei Fukuzumi pushed Makino out of the top eight by just 0.019 seconds.

The two joint championship leaders missed the cut as well, with the #14 Eneos X Prime GR Supra (Kazuya Oshima/Kenta Yamashita) in tenth, and the #3 CraftSports Motul Nissan Z (Katsumasa Chiyo/Mitsunori Takaboshi) down in 14th in the results. Both cars are running the “Stage 1” fuel flow limiter this weekend, taking their maximum fuel burn down from the standard 95 kilogrammes per hour down to 92.6 kg/h – and impacting the power output with it.

However, Suzuka winners Chiyo and Takaboshi will move up a place due to a four-place grid penalty for the #16 Red Bull Motul Mugen NSX-GT (Ukyo Sasahara/Toshiki Oyu). The penalty was given after Oyu exceeded six penalty points under SUPER GT’s Driving Moral Hazard Prevention System, due to his collision with a GT300 car at Suzuka two months ago. Oyu finished the session 13th, and the Red Bull NSX will start 15th on the revised grid.

At the top, two Toyotas set identical lap times of 1’27.095 to lead the session – the #38 ZENT Cerumo GR Supra of Hiroaki Ishiura, and the #36 au TOM’s GR Supra of Sho Tsuboi. Because Ishiura set his time first, he is officially credited with first place in Q1. Kunimoto was third in the #19 WedsSport Supra, leaving it til his last lap to pull himself into the top eight.

For the four Toyotas, three Nissans, and one Honda that advanced to Q2, it was another session where it was hard to bring the tyres up to temperature, leaving teams with time for just one true attack lap.

With less than 30 seconds left, the #24 Realize Corporation Advan Z of Kohei Hirate burst to the top of the board with a time of 1’26.813, and the chequered flag fell with Hirate on top. But as the flag waved, Sakaguchi was setting a searing pace through sector two, four tenths quicker than Hirate’s best. And Sakaguchi followed that up with a fastest third sector to snatch pole position away with a lap of 1’26.178, over six-tenths clear of Hirate’s best.

For Sakaguchi, who also won the pole back in May for the Fuji GT 450km Race, he didn’t expect to have taken his third career pole position. “I was surprised to get a time better than I had expected in my time attacks. But because the team didn’t sound too excited over the radio, I thought that maybe we hadn’t gotten pole position,” Sakaguchi laughed. “But I was so happy when we did.”

“The car was very good, and I had gotten valuable advice from Kunimoto-san just before Q2. I am really grateful to the whole team.”

The WedsSport Bandoh team’s recent qualifying form hasn’t been seen in a long time. With the two Fuji poles from Sakaguchi plus a record pole run from Kunimoto at the Suzuka 300km, they become the first team to win three straight GT500 poles since three-time champion Satoshi Motoyama racked up three straight poles for NISMO in 2009. The record for the most consecutive poles for a single team belongs to the Takata Dome Racing team of Ryo Michigami and Takashi Kogure, who won four in a row in 2007.

Backing up the pace that Daiki Sasaki set at the end of Practice to set the fastest time in the morning, his co-driver Hirate qualified the #24 Realize Z in second place – and just like the Golden Week classic at Fuji three months ago, it’ll be an all-Yokohama/Advan front row in GT500, with the Kondo Racing team lining up on the outside.

Hirate now feels more confident that Yokohama have brought tyres that can help them win the race, able to adapt to changing surface temperatures much better than what they experienced back in May – and Kunimoto echoed that confidence on the other side of the front row. Supporters of both teams are hoping they can avoid another disastrous start to the race caused by their tyres not getting into their window quick enough.

The #37 KeePer TOM’s GR Supra (Sacha Fenestraz/Ritomo Miyata) qualified third, fastest of the Bridgestone-clad cars. They’ll line up next to the #38 ZENT Cerumo GR Supra of Ishiura and Yuji Tachikawa, in fourth.

Tachikawa’s quest for another Fuji victory will be made much more difficult tomorrow as the #38 ZENT Supra is due to serve a ten-second stop-and-go penalty in the opening laps of the race. They lost two engines at Suzuka and have taken their third engine of the year, and also changed chassis due to fire damage sustained at Suzuka – each worth five seconds each.

Tomoki Nojiri finished fifth in Q2 aboard the #8 ARTA NSX-GT. After winning a shortened Golden Week race, ARTA will be going for a sweep of the season at Fuji, something that hasn’t happened since 2005.

Also within the ARTA camp, Hitoshi Iyoki has rejoined the GT500 team as their Chief Engineer. Iyoki won two championships as the Chief Engineer for Team Kunimitsu, in 2018 and 2020. He had been the lead engineer for Drago Corse in GT300 before the team suspended their activities in advance of this weekend.

The #36 au TOM’s Supra of Tsuboi and Giuliano Alesi was sixth, followed by the #12 Calsonic Impul Z (Kazuki Hiramine/Bertrand Baguette) in seventh, and the Michelin-clad #23 Motul Autech Z (Tsugio Matsuda/Ronnie Quintarelli) in eighth.

GT500 QUALIFYING RESULTS >>

The Mercedes-AMG GT3s haven’t been as competitive in GT300 as expected this season, in particular front runners such as Goodsmile Racing & Team UKYO, and K2 R&D LEON Racing. But that changed on Saturday as the #65 LEON Pyramid AMG of Naoya Gamou and Takuro Shinohara rocked up for the team’s first pole since the 2020 season opener at Fuji.

And it wasn’t a fluke – these two Mercedes in particular were strong in practice, with the #4 GSR Hatsune Miku AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Tatsuya Kataoka) leading the way in Practice.

In the group stages, it was the Dunlop-clad Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3s from Gainer that led each group. In Group A, the #10 TanaX Gainer GT-R of Riki Okusa was quickest, and in Group B, the #11 Gainer TanaX GT-R of Keishi Ishikawa followed suit. Group A produced a few surprises below the cut line, mainly the #88 Weibo Primez Lamborghini Huracán GT3 (Takashi Kogure/Yuya Motojima) which starts 17th, and the #55 ARTA Honda NSX GT3 (Hideki Mutoh/Iori Kimura) down in 21st.

A car that could have competed for pole position, the #9 Pacific NAC Hololive Ferrari 488 GT3 (Takeshi Kimura/Kei Cozzolino/Shintaro Kawabata), didn’t even get a chance to run in Q1 Group B due to an electrical issue that brought them to a halt during FCY training – and they’ll start 26th and last on the grid tomorrow. The #5 Mach Syaken/Air Buster MC86 (Yusuke Tomibayashi/Reiji Hiraki) stopped during the session, when Tomibayashi reported that the engine shut down on the front stretch. They did not cause a red flag, however, and will start 24th.

In the closing minutes of Q2, Taniguchi took provisional pole with a lap of 1’36.181. Then, came the qualifying maestro, the #61 Subaru BRZ R&D Sport of Hideki Yamauchi. Despite gaining 25 kilos of BoP weight, Yamauchi put in a blistering time of 1’35.567, and fastest second and third sectors. It looked like it was job done, that Yamauchi would pick up his third pole of the season in his 100th career race.

Then, Gamou put in the fastest first sector of all, three tenths up on Yamauchi, and personal bests in sectors two and three, ripping the top spot from Yamauchi’s grasp with a 1’35.550, just 0.017 seconds faster. Yamauchi slumped over the roof of his car in disbelief in parc fermé, while Gamou celebrated the fourth pole of his career.

“Since I hadn’t expected that we would win pole position, I am tremendously happy,” Gamou said after the session. “I want to take this momentum into tomorrow’s race and run it with no mistakes, so I hope everyone will be cheering for us!”

The #61 Subaru BRZ of reigning champions Yamauchi and Takuto Iguchi will line up second on the grid, for their third front-row start of the season.

And the fan-favourite #4 Hatsune Miku AMG of Taniguchi and Kataoka qualified a season-best third position. Taniguchi, who jokingly commented about the Mercedes-AMG GT3’s strengths over the summer break by saying it was “the slowest in a straight line, the heaviest car, and had the slowest refuelling speed” may be feeling just a little more confidence after today.

After Okusa led Q1 Group A, Ryuichiro Tomita – fresh off his Spa 24 Hours run – put the #10 TanaX Gainer GT-R fourth on the grid. The winning trio of the Golden Week race, Tomita, Okusa, and third driver Yusuke Shiotsu, will try and replicate what LM Corsa did last season and sweep both races at Fuji.

The #18 UPGarage NSX GT3 (Takashi Kobayashi/Kakunoshin Ohta) was fifth, followed by the #96 K-Tunes Lexus RC F GT3 (Morio Nitta/Shinichi Takagi) in sixth. The aforementioned #60 Syntium LMcorsa Toyota GR Supra (Hiroki Yoshimoto/Shunsuke Kohno) qualified in seventh, next to the Suzuka winning #7 Studie BMW M4 GT3 (Seiji Ara/Augusto Farfus) in eighth. BMW Team Studie will be without third driver Tsubasa Kondo this weekend after he tested positive for COVID-19, and we of course hope he recovers swiftly.

Rounding out the top ten of the GT300 grid are the #11 Gainer GT-R of Ishikawa and Hironobu Yasuda in ninth, and the championship-leading #56 Realize/Nissan Mechanic Challenge GT-R of Kiyoto Fujinami and João Paulo de Oliveira in tenth place, despite carrying a whopping 99kg of Success Weight.

GT300 QUALIFYING RESULTS >>

Because multiple red flags shortened the Fuji 450km to just 62 laps, SUPER GT will have another chance to trial the 450km race format, with two compulsory fuel stops and seven sets of dry tyres per team.

Conditions are also expected to be a bit warmer on Sunday, with sunnier skies and higher surface temperatures expected in the race. The Fuji GT 100 Lap Race begins Sunday at 14:00 JST (local time) / 6:00 BST / 7:00 CEST / 1:00 AM EDT.

Images © GTA