Sakaguchi Soars in Sugo, TGR Team WedsSport Bandoh Grab Fourth Pole of 2022

The #19 WedsSport Advan Toyota GR Supra of Yuji Kunimoto and Sena Sakaguchi continued their mastery of qualifying in the 2022 Autobacs SUPER GT Series, winning the GT500 pole position for this weekend’s Sugo GT 300km Race at Sportsland Sugo.

SUPER GT’s annual visit to the hidden gem of Japanese motorsport is a crucial juncture in the championship, the top teams in the points table laden with the most Success Ballast of the season. Combine that with Sugo’s superstitious knack for producing unexpected dramas, and Qualifying would become a high-pressure session for all 15 GT500 teams and 27 GT300 teams.

The Dunlop-clad Honda NSX-GTs of Team Red Bull Mugen and Nakajima Racing led the way in Practice earlier in the morning. The #16 Red Bull Motul Mugen NSX-GT of Toshiki Oyu backed up that pace with a provisional track record of 1’09.660, leading Q1 just ahead of the fastest man and car in Practice, Hiroki Otsu in the #64 Modulo NSX-GT. That was Oyu’s second time to top Q1 in two races.

With heavy Success Ballast including stage 2 and 3 fuel flow restrictors playing a factor in their one-lap pace, the top three teams in the GT500 championship missed the cut in Q1. The #37 KeePer TOM’s GR Supra (Sacha Fenestraz/Ritomo Miyata) was tenth, just ahead of the #3 CraftSports Motul Nissan Z (Katsumasa Chiyo/Mitsunori Takaboshi) in 11th. The championship-leading #12 Calsonic Impul Z (Kazuki Hiramine/Bertrand Baguette) was only able to manage 14th in the session, carrying the Stage 3 fuel flow restrictor (88.0 kg/h) and 39kg of physical Success Weight.

Unfortunately, the #36 au TOM’s GR Supra of Sho Tsuboi never got a chance to make a run to get into the top eight. Tsuboi went to the garage at the end of his out lap, and despite the quick work of the TOM’s mechanics to get the car back out on track, he returned to the garage after another slow out lap. Tsuboi and Giuliano Alesi will start 15th and last on the GT500 grid tomorrow, as Race Engineer Satoshi Yoshitake later diagnosed the problem as a turbocharger sensor issue.

Four Hondas, three Toyotas, and one Nissan advanced into Q2. It took some time before these eight cars made their way out onto the track to begin warming up their tyres, building up to the typical crescendo in the final minutes of the session.

Sakaguchi was the fastest through the first three sectors of his attack lap, but as he exited the double-left hand SP corners, the #64 Modulo NSX of Takuya Izawa had gone off course and rejoined ahead of him just before the high-speed 110R Corner. Sakaguchi backed out of the throttle slightly before hammering down through the long left-hander, and he was able to use the slipstream from the car ahead to gain back the time lost on the front stretch. The time was a 1’09.627, a new GT500 course record and the pole-winning time by nearly four-tenths of a second!

Sakaguchi said after qualifying: “Although I got caught behind a slower car in the fourth (and last) sector of my timed lap, the pace I had run through the first three sectors was fast enough to make up for that loss, which was fortunate. I was able to get a good performance in that time attack thanks to the great matching of the team’s car setup and the Yokohama tyres they prepared for us. I am so grateful to everyone.”

This is Sakaguchi’s third pole individually, and for TGR Team WedsSport Bandoh, it’s their fourth of the season – the most for one car in a GT500 campaign since the 2007 Takata Dome NSX of Ryo Michigami and Takashi Kogure snagged five poles. However, it took until the fifth time for Michigami and Kogure to convert pole into victory fifteen years ago. Likewise, Kunimoto and Sakaguchi desperately want to shake off the team’s pejorative “SaturdaySport” label and finally convert this pole into a first win for the blue and gold since 2016.

Yuji Tachikawa had another shot at a milestone 25th career pole position, but he and Hiroaki Ishiura will have to settle for the outside of the front row in their #38 ZENT Cerumo GR Supra. After three straight mechanical retirements, Tachikawa and Ishiura hope their fortunes will change in tomorrow’s race.

The only Nissan Z to advance into Q2 was the #23 Motul Autech Z (Tsugio Matsuda/Ronnie Quintarelli). Matsuda set the third-quickest time in Q2 after Quintarelli progressed through from Q1.

But, after Matsuda earned his sixth penalty point under the Driving Moral Hazard Prevention System in Suzuka – the consequence of his inadvertent swipe across the bow of Kazuki Hiramine late in the race – the Motul Z has a four-place grid penalty added on, dropping them to seventh on the grid.

This elevates the #100 Stanley NSX-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino) up to third on the grid, making it an all-Honda second row next to the #17 Astemo NSX-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi/Nobuharu Matsushita) in fourth. In particular, the Astemo NSX did well to make it to Q2, despite carrying the Stage 2 fuel flow restrictor (90.2 kg/h) while its nearest championship rivals missed the cut.

The #39 Denso Kobelco SARD GR Supra (Yuhi Sekiguchi/Yuichi Nakayama) will line up fifth, next to the #16 Red Bull NSX of Oyu and Ukyo Sasahara in sixth. Sasahara simply couldn’t find any grip in his time attack, leading to an underwhelming result for the team that looked certain to win pole heading into Q2.

Behind the Motul Z of Matsuda and Quintarelli, the #64 Modulo NSX of Izawa and Otsu starts eighth.

GT500 QUALIFYING RESULTS >>

When the chequered flag fell in GT300 Q2, the #96 K-Tunes Lexus RC F GT3 of Shinichi Takagi appeared to have won pole position, which would have given Takagi his 14th career GT300 pole position – a new all-time class record for most poles.

But after a technical inspection, the black and white Lexus was found to be underweight – specifically, they were short of the 38 kilogrammes of Success Weight they’d been prescribed.

The team explained that they had removed and re-installed the ballast due to maintenance reasons, and made an error when putting it back in the car. It wasn’t malicious, but it was a clear-cut infringement that strips Takagi and Morio Nitta of pole position and relegates them to the back of the GT300 grid tomorrow.

Incredibly, the #61 Subaru BRZ R&D Sport of Takuto Iguchi and Hideki Yamauchi – despite carrying a whopping 89kg of Success Weight – won the GT300 pole for the fourth consecutive year at Sportsland Sugo.

Iguchi making it into the top eight in Q1 Group A was a strong effort on its own, but Yamauchi setting a time of 1’17.691 was even more remarkable still. It was three-tenths off of Takagi’s excluded time of 1’17.373, but four-tenths clear once the penalties were applied.

“The first thing is how surprised I was to find out that we were moved up to pole position winners,” Yamauchi joked in the press conference. “But I think that in the end we were destined to win this pole position, so I want to carry this good flow into tomorrow’s race.”

“In my driving, I think that I pushed strongly, but there were some regrets that I had in terms of my performance. But that can be cleared now, and I think that we can credit this result to how hard the team has worked since the last round at Suzuka to get us to where we are today. So, tomorrow I think it is up to us drivers to pay everyone on the team back for what they have achieved by driving as hard as we can every lap to the end.”

It’s Yamauchi’s 11th career pole position, which now puts him one behind Hiroki Katoh for third all-time, and just two behind Takagi and joint-record holder Kota Sasaki’s 13 poles. Yamauchi has won seven poles since the introduction of the second-generation Subaru BRZ GT300 race car in 2021, in 14 races – a remarkable run for the modern-day one-lap maestro in GT300.

The #60 Syntium LMcorsa Toyota GR Supra (Hiroki Yoshimoto/Shunsuke Kohno) starts second, putting two GT300 original vehicles and two Dunlop-clad cars on the front row. It’s the best grid position for the LM Corsa team since the introduction of their bespoke aero configuration at the start of the season.

The two JLOC Lamborghini Huracán GT3s showed strong pace all throughout Saturday and will share the second row, with the #87 Bamboo Airways Huracán (Kosuke Matsuura/Natsu Sakaguchi) in third…

…and the #88 Weibo Primez Huracán (Takashi Kogure/Yuya Motojima) backing up the fastest time in Practice with a fourth-place qualifying effort.

The #65 LEON Pyramid Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Naoya Gamou/Takuro Shinohara) will start fifth, and the #25 Hoppy Schatz GR Supra (Takamitsu Matsui/Seita Nonaka) qualified a strong sixth place, by far the best effort of their difficult maiden season with their own GR Supra.

Seventh-fastest was the #52 Saitama Toyopet GreenBrave GR Supra (Hiroki Yoshida/Kohta Kawaai). The championship-leading #56 Realize/Nissan Mechanic Challenge GT-R GT3 (Kiyoto Fujinami/João Paulo de Oliveira) qualified eighth, but with Oliveira exceeding six penalty points after Suzuka, they drop to 12th place on the final grid.

Iori Kimura produced the fastest time in Q1 Group B, while team mate Hideki Mutoh was only ninth-fastest in Q2. Their #55 ARTA Honda NSX GT3 will inherit eighth on the grid, ahead of the #7 Studie BMW M4 GT3 (Seiji Ara/Augusto Farfus) and the #18 UPGarage NSX GT3 (Takashi Kobayashi/Kakunoshin Ohta) rounding out the first five rows.

In Q1 Group A, the #9 Pacific Hololive NAC Ferrari 488 GT3 of Kei Cozzolino set the fastest time, and amateur co-driver Takeshi Kimura put the car 15th on the grid. In that same session, the #244 Hachi-Ichi GR Supra (Kimiya Sato/Atsushi Miyake), tipped as a favourite for pole and victory, actually finished last in the session and will start 25th.

There was also a second post-qualifying exclusion as the #5 Mach Syaken/Air Buster MC86 (Yusuke Tomibayashi/Reiji Hiraki) was not carrying the correct amount of fuel onboard for its run. They’ll be sent to the back with the K-Tunes RC F.

GT300 QUALIFYING RESULTS >>

If history is anything to go by, then this year’s running of the Sugo GT 300km won’t be uneventful by any stretch of the imagination – all the more incentive to wake up early or stay up late to catch Sunday’s 84-lap feature race! The green flag flies at 14:00 JST / 6:00 BST / 7:00 CEST / 1:00 EDT.

Images © GTA