2023 SUPER GT Round 3 Report

• HOME
• Motorsports
• 2023
• SUPER GT
• Round3 Report

The third round of the 2023 Super GT series was held at Suzuka Circuit in Mie Prefecture from June 3rd to 4th.

As Typhoon Mawar hit the Japanese islands, the teams had to bring in their cars and equipment and set them up under bad weather conditions with strong wind and heavy rain on Friday, June 2nd. But the sky cleared up on Saturday, and the free practice session took place under strong sunshine, with the temperatures rising quickly well before noon.

The track record of the GT500 class was 1’44″112, which Yuji Kunimoto set at the wheel of WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra last year. And no one could exceed the time in the free practice, but this time Daiki Sasaki driving Realize Corporation ADVAN Z, was the fastest at the end of the session. The Z has shown its speed in the last two rounds but couldn’t translate it into excellent results.

In the aftermath of the Safety Car period during a support event, the Super GT’s official qualifying session got underway at 15:25, 20 minutes later than scheduled. It began with Group A of Q1 for the GT300 class, in which six Yokohama Tire users participated, including UpGarage NSX GT3, which won the season opener, GoodSmile Hatsune Miku AMG, and Pacific VSPO NAC AMG.

With the air/track temperatures at 25/38 degrees centigrade and a powerful wind blowing, Takashi Kobayashi, behind the wheel of the UpGarage-backed NSX, set the seventh fastest time and became the only survivor for Q2 among the Yokohama users.

Group B had ten Yokohama-shoed cars, led by Realize Nissan Mechanic Challenge GT-R and Hachi-Ichi GR Supra, which were second and sixth in the GT 300 point standings. Igor Omura Fraga in Anest Iwata Racing RC F GT3 was the fastest in the group, followed by Joao Paulo de Oliveira in the Realize-backed GT-R by only 56 thousandths of a second.

In addition to them, Hoppy Schatz GR Supra GT, Bamboo Airways Lamborghini GT3, JLOC Lamborghini GT3, and Hachi-Ichi GR Supra GT cleared the bar for Q2. And the Hoppy-backed Supra became the top Yokohama user in Q2 by taking up the fifth grid in the class.

Sena Sakaguchi drove WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra in Q1 for the GT500 class. Expectations were high because the team behind this car won last year’s pole position by setting a new track record. And Sakaguchi delivered the goods, as he was the fastest in Q1, and his best time was just 0.2 seconds shy of the record.

Sasaki, at the wheel of Realize Corporation ADVAN Z, ended the session in second, and the gap with Sakaguchi was only seven-hundredth seconds. So both Yokohama Tire users finished the Q1 session in the top two slots.

Kunimoto, the track record holder, attracted much attention in Q2, but he ended up with the third fastest time, as he made “small mistakes at Hair Pin and Chicane.” However, Kohei Hirate in Realize Corporation ADVAN Z performed even better than Kunimoto did, especially in the second half of his lap, and beat everyone else. Thus, he secured Kondo Racing’s third pole position in the GT500 class, and it was his second since 2026 in the season’s final round at Motegi.

But, unfortunately, the race control deleted all of the Sasaki / Hirate pair’s times in the qualifying because a technical infringement was found in the scrutineering after the session. As a result, WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra was promoted to the second grid, while Realize Corporation ADVAN Z was allowed to start the race from the bottom end of the grids. It was so frustrating for the drivers, as they had the sheer speed for sure, but they vowed to recover in the race as much as possible.

The sun was scorching even in the morning on Sunday, June 4th, and the 450km race started on dry surfaces. In the hand of Hirate, Realize Corporation ADVAN Z already gained a position on the opening lap. On the other hand, Kunimoto in WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra remained in the position where he started, but the race leader was well within his reach during the early laps.

Since a GT300 car halted on the track due to a mechanical problem, the race control declared the Full Course Yellow (FCY) on Lap 8 and then changed it to the Safety Car period. This process compressed the whole field, and the racing resumed on Lap 13. Battling with several cars around him, Hirate gradually moved up through the field by passing three rivals one after another in four laps from Lap 16.

Kunimoto was still running in second and headed to the pit lane at the end of Lap 26. The team planned to entrust the car to Sakaguchi for the remaining approximately 50 laps to the end. When rejoining the race, he was in the interim seventh place, but the six cars ahead of him were still to make their first stop. Therefore, he was leading the cars that had made their first stop, but he had to drive at a fast pace, particularly on his out lap, to undercut those six cars when they made their pit stop.

And that was precisely what Sakaguchi did. WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra completed its out lap astonishingly fast, which put pressure on the interim leader. At the end of Lap 29, the leader reacted to the WedsSport-backed car’s move and came into the pit to get a fresh set of tires, refuel, and make a driver change.

When the car exited the pit lane to return to the track, WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra had already gotten through Turn 1. So Sakaguchi’s terrific effort on his out lap and the team’s perfect job at the pit gave him the position of the effective race leader.

Sakaguchi returned to the pit after completing Lap 46 for their second mandatory stop. While several rivals got ahead of him during the stop, they obviously had to make their second stop sooner or later. Consequently, every time one of them headed to its pit box, WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra regained a position on the track and was running in second when it entered Lap 55.

So Sakaguchi was waiting for the temporary leader to steer to the pit lane for its second stop, but a major accident involving a GT500 car and a GT300 car occurred between 130R Corner and Chicane on Lap 59.

The race control sent the Safety Car out immediately and then stopped the race with a red flag. They first tried to clear up the track and restart the race, but it became clear that it couldn’t be continued because the tire barriers and the guard rails on the spot were severely damaged. Thus, the race control declared that the race ended at the end of Lap 58.

Therefore, WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra was ranked second in the provisional result, and the crew got on the podium as the second-place finisher in the prize-giving ceremony immediately after the race. However, when the race ended with the red flag, the winner in the provisional result hadn’t done its second pit stop and refueling yet, so they received a time penalty for disregarding the obligation and stepped down to fourth.

Because of this, WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra was promoted as the race winner in the final official result. It was the first victory for the team in seven years since the Thai round in 2016.

The fact that the race was cut short by the red flag was unfortunate for Realize Corporation ADVAN Z, as the car was still on its way to recovery from the bottom of the grids. Nevertheless, they finished the race in eighth and earned valuable points, another proof of the car’s potential after the superb performance in the qualifying.

The GT300 class race ended when the leader completed its 54th lap. Like the Realize-backed car in the GT500 class, Realize Nissan Mechanic Challenge GT-R was still gaining positions after starting from the ninth grid. While there was more than a ten-second gap with the leaders, Teppei Natori, who drove the car in the first stint, felt frustrated about the way it ended, as he said, “Our pace was good, and we were more than one second per lap faster than the class leaders. So if the race went on normally, we could have make at least a podium finish, if not a win.”

Considering the fact that the car carried a 66kg Success Weight as it won the previous Fuji round, finishing in fourth wasn’t bad at all. And by adding points here, Realize Nissan Mechanic Challenge GT-R became the championship leader after this round.