Ohta gives Honda HRC Prelude-GT first Super GT pole at Fuji

Kakunoshin Ohta and Team HRC ARTA Mugen have scored the first Super GT pole position for the new Honda HRC Prelude-GT during qualifying for this weekend’s Fuji GT 300KM Race at Fuji Speedway.

The No. 8 ARTA Mugen Honda of Ohta and co-driver Hiroki Otsu will lead an all-Honda front row for Sunday’s 66-lap race, which will air live in the United States and Canada on RACER Network and RACER+.

GT500 qualifying was a showcase for the new Hondas, as Real Racing’s rookie driver Yuto Nomura set the fastest time in Q1 aboard the No. 17 Honda, leading Team Kunimitsu’s Naoki Yamamoto, with Otsu in third place. All five HRC Prelude-GTs made the top ten in Q1 and advanced to fight for pole in Q2.

Q2 built to its crescendo in the final minute. Ren Sato in the No. 16 ARTA Mugen Honda, and then Tadasuke Makino in the No. 100 Team Kunimitsu Honda, each took turns at the top of the timesheets. Just as Makino crossed the start/finish line, Ohta followed in his slipstream and took his first career GT500 pole position with a lap of 1m26.776s.

Ohta, the current Super Formula Championship leader who recently won two races in a triple-header at Fuji, admitted, “It has surely been different with Super GT. It may be pressure, but we seem to be a team that has a big load on our shoulders. Nonetheless, in the last two rounds have been no good. Still, the team has been trying hard to do something about this, and it has finally paid off. We really came into qualifying with a serious attitude.”

Makino put the No. 100 Honda second on the grid with a 1m27.078s, and Real Racing’s Koudai Tsukakoshi qualified third in the No. 17 Honda. The No. 16 ARTA Mugen Honda of Sato and Tomoki Nojiri will line up fifth, and the No. 64 Nakajima Racing Honda (Riki Okusa/Igor Fraga) will start seventh.

The fastest of the Toyota GR Supra GT500s was the No. 38 TGR Team Cerumo Toyota of Toshiki Oyu and Rikuto Kobayashi, which qualified fourth. The No. 23 NISMO Nissan Z of Katsumasa Chiyo and Mitsunori Takaboshi qualified eighth, best of the three Nissans.

Championship leaders Sho Tsuboi and Kenta Yamashita will start 11th in their No. 36 TOM’S Toyota, they were the first team below the Q1 cut line while carrying significant Success Ballast this weekend.

In his first Super GT race in three years, Shintaro Kawabata scored his first career GT300 pole position, and the first for Ferrari customer team Ponos Racing.

The No. 45 Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo of Kawabata and Takuro Shinohara dominated both phases of qualifying: Shinohara led his group in Q1, while Kawabata won the pole in Q2 with a lap of 1m36.209s, nearly six-tenths clear of the next-fastest car.

“I didn’t know this kind of thing can actually happen!” exclaimed Kawabata, the reigning SRO Japan Cup GT3 champion. “Since this is the car that the team has been working hard on, the result is clear. This time it has nothing to do with the fact that it was me driving. Rather, I was worried whether or not we would even get through Q1 – I think we owe this result to Takuro as well.”

Aided by a significant buff in their Balance of Performance, the three Ferrari 296 GT3 Evos were strong in qualifying. The No. 6 Velorex Ferrari of Yoshiaki Katayama and Niklas Krütten qualified third, sharing the second row with the No. 7 CarGuy MKS Racing Ferrari of Zak O’Sullivan – and rookie Kiyoshi Umegaki, who led the second Q1 group.

Standing in the way of an all-Ferrari 1-2-3 was the No. 60 LM Corsa Lexus LC500 (Hiroki Yoshimoto/Shunsuke Kohno) which qualified second.

Of the current GT300 championship front-runners, the No. 65 K2 R&D LEON Racing Mercedes-AMG (Naoya Gamou/Togo Suganami) led the pack, qualifying ninth, one position ahead of the No. 56 Kondo Racing Nissan GT-R (João Paulo de Oliveira/Iori Kimura) which won last time at Fuji.

The championship-leading No. 777 D’station Racing Aston Martin (Tomonobu Fujii/Charlie Fagg), meanwhile, will start all the way down in 27th after missing Q2.

Live, English-language coverage of the Super GT Series Fuji 300KM starts Sunday at 12:20am ET on RACER Network and RACER+, with commentary provided by Speed City Broadcasting’s Jonathan Green and Jon Massengale.