2024 SUPER GT Round 8 Report

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The eighth round of the 2024 Super GT series took place at Mobility Resort Motegi. The race meeting here was supposed to be the season finale, which might well have been an exciting showdown of the championship battle. However, the fifth round at Suzuka, scheduled on August 31st – September 1st, had to be postponed to December 7th – 8th due to an approaching typhoon and will become the effective final round.

Therefore, all competing cars carried their Success Weights this weekend, as they should do in the penultimate meeting, which was the first time in three years for a Super GT’s Motegi round since 2021.

The rain hit the last two qualifying days of the Super GT events, and it was repeated for the third time. It was raining on Saturday, November 2nd, from the early morning. The official practice session, which began at 9:00, saw as many as five interruptions by the red flag because of heavy downpours or removing cars that went off the track. After the sixth red flag of the day, which was shown only a few minutes into the GT300 exclusive section, all the on-track activities, including the Full Course Yellow (FCY) practice, were canceled as the rain got heavier again.

As a result, the teams were short on their preparation track time. In such a situation, Uni-Robo Bluegrass Ferrari (Yoshiaki Katayama/Roberto Merhi Muntan), the pole sitter of the previous Autopolis round, was the second fastest in the GT300 class. UpGarage NSX GT3 (Takashi Kobayashi/Syun Koide) ranked fourth in the class and shared the upper part of the timing monitor with the Ferrari.

It continued to rain, which got heavier at times, but the amount of rainfall reduced when the time to start the qualifying session approached. Consequently, the session began on time, which hadn’t been the case in the last two Super GT events, while the track surfaces were still wet.

As for the GT300 class, all of the 27 competitors took part in Q1. Then, the top 14 qualifiers in Q1, called Upper 14, and the rest of the field, Lower 13, had their individual Q2 sessions. Since the tarmac was wet, the final qualifying result was decided by the competitors’ best times in the Q2 session only, as prescribed in the rules.

Around the halfway point of the 20-minute Q1 for the GT300 class, the rain was coming down harder, and the track conditions became worse, which prompted the race control to present the red flag. This meant that the competitors had to heat their tires again and then make qualifying attempts within the remaining ten minutes, in the rain with the air and track temperatures being fairly low.

Among the Yokohama Tire users, Uni-Robo Bluegrass Ferrari was the fastest and ranked fifth overall, confirming its promising performance in the official practice. Anest Iwata Racing RC F GT3 (Igor Omura Fraga/Yuga Fujitani), UpGarage NSX GT3, and GoodSmile Hatsune Miku AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Tatsuya Kataoka) followed the Ferrari, and six teams ended up in Upper 14.

The winner of last year’s Motegi round, which was held as the season’s final race, Venteny Lamborghini GT3 (Takashi Kogure/Yuya Motojima), naturally attracted much attention this time. But they ended the session in lowly 23rd because of the wrong tire choice, which meant they were allotted to Lower 13 and had to start the race from the posterior part of the grids.

The Q2 sessions began with that for Lower 15. Venteny Lamborghini GT3 finished in third and took the 17th grid overall. In Upper 14, in which the pole position was fought between the faster qualifiers, UpGarage NSX GT3 took the third grid, which was the highest place among the Yokohama Tire users. Kobayashi and Koide praised the team for their excellent car preparation and the tires that provided a high grip level even in heavy rain. Uni-Robo Bluegrass Ferrari and Metalive S Lamborghini GT3 (Kosuke Matsuura/Natsu Sakaguchi) secured the seventh and eighth grids, respectively.

In the GT500 class, all competitors ran in the single Q1 session and then in Q2, so the starting grids were determined by the combined best times from Q1 and Q2, as with the case under the dry track condition.

The two Yokohama-shoed cars struggled with a large amount of rainfall. Realize Corporation ADVAN Z (Tsugio Matsuda/Teppei Natori) ended the session in 14th, while it was the tenth fastest in Q2. As WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra (Yuji Kunimoto/Sena Sakaguchi) was on the 15th in the session, the two cars were placed on the last row of the GT500 grids.

In stark contrast to the weather on the day before, the sky above the race track at Motegi was clear without a speck of cloud on Sunday. The air was fresh as if the rain had washed it the previous day. Thanks to the bright sunshine, some might even feel the heat, but a cold wind blew in from the north. Hence, the conditions, in general, were similar to those of last year’s race, with the air/track temperatures being 22/31 degrees centigrade when the race began.

The cars in both classes, arranged in separate rows, completed the formation lap, and the 300-km race got underway. The starting driver of UpGarage NSX GT3, Koide, lost two places during the opening lap and was in fifth, followed by Sakaguchi in Metalive S Lamborghini GT3 in sixth. Much to everyone’s surprise, Motojima, at the wheel of Venteny Lamborghini GT3, immediately gained five positions after starting from the 17th grid. He steadily moved up through the field and was already in seventh at the end of Lap 8.

Two laps later, Motojima overtook Metalive S Lamborghini GT3, another car run by the JLOC team that he belongs to and came up to sixth. At the pit stop on Lap 21, the team opted to change only two rear tires to reduce the time spent in the box. The choice paid off, and Kogure, now behind the wheel of Venteny Lamborghini GT3, found himself in third when all leading cars completed the mandatory pit stop.

Because the two cars ahead of Kogure didn’t change any tires at their stop, he could take advantage of fresher rear tires and decrease the gap with them when the race reached its halfway point.

Then, the top three, including Kogure’s Lamborghini, got involved in a close-quarter fight. On Lap 30, he passed the car in second place at 90 Degrees Corner and immediately closed in the race leader, continuing with the momentum. Two laps later, the race leader was slightly obstructed by a back marker on the pit straight, and Kogure didn’t let the opportunity slip by. By taking the outside line, he became abreast with the leader at the entry to Turn 1, and they went through the next corner side-by-side. It meant that Kogure could place his car on the inside down to Turn 3 and managed to get ahead of the rival. Thus, Venteny Lamborghini GT3 became the new race leader.

Kogure kept a fantastic pace even after that, which was reminiscent of Motojima’s stint when he earned a lot of positions, and built a nearly 20-second gap with the car in second when he received the checkered flag first. Venteny Lamborghini GT3 marked its second consecutive victory after winning the previous Autopolis round, and it was the third one of the season for them.

UpGarage NSX GT3 took third place. After a relatively late pit stop among the GT300 cars, it was running in fifth when Kobayashi rejoined the race after the stop. Then, he overtook two rivals on the track to make their way to the first podium finish for them this year.

In the GT500 class, Realize Corporation ADVAN Z ended the race in eighth again, as it did at Autopolis. Natori, behind the wheel of the car in its first stint, showed some brilliant overtaking during the early laps and brought the car up to ninth by Lap 11. The team decided to make a pit stop and change tires relatively early and did so on Lap 22. As a result, Matsuda drove for a long second stint, about 40 laps, after the driver change but could keep up with another Nissan Z just ahead of him and even chased it up towards the end.

WedsSport ADVAN GR Supra started the race with Kunimoto in the driving seat. He came into the box on Lap 23 and changed to Sakaguchi, but the latter returned to the pit only after three laps, as the driver felt something wrong with the car. After lengthy repair work, they rejoined and finished the race in 13th, five laps behind the winner.