1-2-3 for Honda at Suzuka Super GT

Honda followed up its maiden win and 1-2 finish at Fuji Speedway and went one step up in the Super GT Suzuka 300km, locking out the GT500 podium with the No. 16 ARTA Mugen HRC Prelude-GT of Tomoki Nojiri and Ren Sato taking the win in Sunday’s race.

The No. 17 Real Racing Honda of Koudai Tsukakoshi and Yuto Nomura finished second after starting the race on the pole, while the No. 8 ARTA Mugen Honda of Kakunoshin Ohta and Hiroki Otsu completed the top-three lockout in third place.

Rookie Nomura led the opening stanza of the race from pole position, and Real Racing’s veteran driver Tsukakoshi maintained a slight advantage over the No. 16 car behind it.

But the turning point of the race came with 16 laps to go when Tsukakoshi entered 130R with a slow-moving GT300 car in its path, forcing the No. 17 car to take evasive action in the tarmac runoff. That loss of momentum allowed Sato to breeze through the open door and take the lead.

He would take the checkered flag behind the safety car after the No. 52 Saitama Green Brave Toyota GR Supra of Hiroki Yoshida went off at 130R, hit the barrier and flipped over with six laps to go. Thankfully, the 2023 GT300 champion Yoshida was able to walk away from the incident with no apparent injuries.

It’s ARTA Mugen’s first Super GT win with either of its cars since August 2024 at Fuji when the team got the previous Honda Civic Type R-GT’s first victory at Fuji. Nojiri’s 11th career win puts him in a three-way tie with reigning champion Kenta Yamashita and series legend Juichi Wakisaka, while Sato earned his first Super GT win in the premier class.

"We had the best possible performance from the car and the tires,” said Nojiri. “It ran as we hoped it would, and we were able to pass the other cars aggressively as we wished. In the qualifying things had not gone well for Ren, which was disappointing, but I was able to recover from that and turn the car over to Ren with just one car in front of us. After that, Ren also pushed hard, so I truly feel it was a magnificent victory.”

"I was confused about where I should park the winning car, because I am not used to winning!” Sato said with a laugh. “For the qualifying they had prepared us a car that was capable of winning pole position, but because of my mistake we couldn’t get it, so in the race I ran with determination to make up for that. And Nojiri-san also passed two cars, so all I had to do was pass one more. This was really terrific.”

A runner-up finish for the No. 17 Real Racing Honda, meanwhile, adds to the team’s growing list of near-misses with victory at Suzuka Circuit over the last 20 years.

Katsumasa Chiyo and Mitsunori Takaboshi finished fourth in the No. 23 NISMO Nissan Z GT500, while the top Toyota was the No. 38 TGR Team Cerumo GR Supra (Toshiki Oyu/Rikuto Kobayashi) in fifth. Championship leaders Sho Tsuboi and Kenta Yamashita labored to a ninth-place run in the No. 36 TGR Team TOM’S Toyota.

But Tsuboi and Yamashita still leave Suzuka with a healthy 17-point lead in the championship with four races remaining. With the win today, Nojiri and Sato move up to second in the standings, two points up on the No. 14 Rookie Racing Toyota duo of Nirei Fukuzumi and Kazuya Oshima, who finished eighth.

And after 17 years of racing in Super GT, perennial GT300 midfielder Pacific Racing Team seized the moment for a fairytale first win. Yusuke Tomibayashi and Yuta Fujiwara won from pole in the No. 9 BMW M4 GT3 EVO, never relinquishing control of the race from green to checkered.

It was the first win for both Tomibayashi, a true sim racing to real-world motorsport convert, and Fujiwara, a two-way racing athlete in both circuit racing and drifting.

“Thanks to everyone’s efforts we were able to run well in qualifying. In the race, some people thought we would have difficulty, but Yuta Fujiwara ran wonderfully like a veteran despite the fact that he is only 20 years old,Tomibayashi said. " Since we were starting from pole position we were determined to win, and since we had the help of student mechanics from the Nakanihon Automotive College working on our car, and there’s one student for whom this race will be his last – he did a perfect job, so all we had to think about was managing the tires and driving fast. I want to express my thanks to chairman (Motoki) Jinno and everyone else.”

“Thanks to everyone we were able to get first place, so I am very happy,” said Fujiwara. “This first win makes me so overjoyed that I’m about to cry. I want to express my gratitude to the team, to BMW, and the people at Michelin tires for maintaining the great performance to the very end of the race. Thank you so much.”

The Umamusume: Pretty Derby-sponsored BMW had a lead as big as 15 seconds when the No. 52 Green Brave GR Supra had its incident which effectively ended the race. It still went on to win ahead of the No. 7 CarGuy MKS Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo of Zak O’Sullivan and Kiyoshi Umegaki, who followed up third place in Fuji with second at Suzuka.

Then it was the No. 18 Team UpGarage Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo (Takashi Kobayashi/Kotaro Shimbara) in third, the No. 777 D’station Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo (Tomonobu Fujii/Charlie Fagg) in fourth and the No. 56 Kondo Racing Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 (João Paulo de Oliveira/Iori Kimura) in fifth.

The No. 88 JLOC Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 (Takashi Kogure/Daniil Kvyat) made it six manufacturers inside the top six in GT300 as GT3 cars dominated the top 10 in class.

With their results, Oliveira and Kimura retake the GT300 points lead by just one point over Fujii and Fagg; O’Sullivan trails the leading duo by five points, then it’s another three points back to Umegaki in fourth, while Yoshida and Seita Nonaka fall to fifth in points after the No. 52’s accident.

Other title contenders that had tough days included the No. 65 LEON Racing Mercedes-AMG (Naoya Gamou/Togo Suganami) in 17th and the No. 2 Inging Motorsport Toyota 86 (Yuui Tsutsumi/Kazuhisa Urabe) in 20th, both out of the points after receiving drive-through penalties for incidents.

The No. 2 is now sixth in points, ahead of the No. 31 apr Lexus LC500h (Kazuto Kotaka/Miki Koyama) which took minor points in 11th. Two other notable cars out of the top 15 were the No. 4 Goodsmile Racing & TeamUKYO Mercedes-AMG (22nd) after starting from the pit lane due to an incident in the warm-up session, and the No. 61 R&D Sport Subaru BRZ, which was punted off at NIPPO (formerly Dunlop) Corner while running in the top five.

Super GT next visits Sportsland Sugo, near Sendai in the Tohoku region of Japan, on Sept. 20.