Okusa leads Honda lockout in Super GT qualifying at Sugo

For the third straight race in the Autobacs Super GT Series, Honda has locked out the front row in the GT500 class – although the pole-winning car for Sunday’s race at Sportsland Sugo is somewhat of a surprise when it comes to this year’s form book.

But with no points in the first four races, the Dunlop-equipped No. 64 Nakajima Racing Honda HRC Prelude-GT of Riki Okusa and Igor Fraga also went into the Sugo GT 300km Race weekend with no Success Ballast aboard. They used it to their advantage on Saturday, setting the fastest time in practice, and then leading both legs in Qualifying on the way to the team’s first Super GT pole position since November 2024 at Motegi.

Last year, Okusa and the No. 64 Nakajima Racing Honda were involved in a heavy three-car incident along the main straightaway of the Sportsland Sugo circuit. The team, founded by Japanese racing legend Satoru Nakajima, has not won a championship race in Super GT since the 2017 Suzuka 1000km.

Fraga went quickest in Q1, leading a Honda top-five lockout as all five of the manufacturer’s cars advanced to Q2. Then in Q2, co-driver Okusa set a new GT500 qualifying course record with a lap of 1m09.050s, which gave him his second career pole position by over 0.3s.

Just as they did at Suzuka, Nakajima Racing and Real Racing will share the front row at Sugo, where the No. 17 Honda of Koudai Tsukakoshi and Yuto Nomura qualified second via a 1m09.368s from the Honda-backed rookie Nomura.

The leading Toyota in qualifying was the Yokohama Advan-shod No. 19 TGR Team Bandoh Toyota GR Supra of Yuji Kunimoto and Sena Sakaguchi in third place, ahead of the No. 100 Team Kunimitsu Honda (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino) in fourth, the No. 38 TGR Team Cerumo Toyota (Toshiki Oyu/Rikuto Kobayashi) in fifth, and the No. 16 ARTA Mugen Honda (Tomoki Nojiri/Ren Sato), last round’s winners at Suzuka, in sixth.

Only one Nissan advanced to Q2, the No. 12 Team Impul Nissan Z NISMO GT500 (Kazuki Hiramine/Bertrand Baguette), which ended up qualifying ninth on a day where the Nissan stable suffered two major setbacks.

The first story broke before the start of Practice on Saturday morning, when NISMO announced that star driver Katsumasa Chiyo would miss this weekend’s race due to a foot injury sustained Friday night. 

Reserve driver Daiki Sasaki will replace Chiyo in the No. 23 Nissan, but co-driver Mitsunori Takaboshi was only able to qualify 13th and missed the cut for Q2.

Then in Practice, the No. 24 Kondo Racing Nissan of last year’s Sugo race winner Teppei Natori crashed in the S-Curve; the car was repaired in time for Qualifying, but Natori also missed the cut for Q2, along with the two TGR Team TOM’S Toyotas.

In GT300, the No. 60 LM Corsa Lexus LC500 won last year at Sugo, and will start this year’s race from pole position on a day where the Japanese-built GTA-GT300 cars dominated the top of the timesheets.

Hiroki Yoshimoto and Shunsuke Kohno will start from the pole position after Yoshimoto set a scorching Q2 lap at 1m16.944s; that lap gave LM Corsa its first Super GT pole position, and Yoshimoto’s first career pole in a career which has spanned 23 seasons in the series.

That lap displaced the favored No. 61 R&D Sport Subaru BRZ of Takuto Iguchi and Hideki Yamauchi from the pole; the struggling Subaru was still second with a 1m17.325s.

Then in third was the best of the GT3 cars, the No. 7 CarGuy MKS Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo (Zak O’Sullivan/Kiyoshi Umegaki) in third, while the rebuilt No. 52 Saitama Green Brave Toyota GR Supra (Hiroki Yoshida/Seita Nonaka) was an impressive fourth. Rounding out the top five was the No. 777 D’station Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo (Tomonobu Fujii/Charlie Fagg) in fifth.

Points leaders João Paulo de Oliveira and Iori Kimura qualified 19th in the No. 56 Kondo Racing Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 after missing the cut for Q2 in a group which also included the No. 9 Pacific Racing Team BMW (Yusuke Tomibayashi/Yuta Fujiwara), following its Suzuka win with a 27th-place qualification.

The good news ahead of Sunday’s race is that the most severe weather brought on by an approaching typhoon is not expected to reach Miyagi Prefecture until the evening.

Live coverage of Sunday’s race on RACER Network and RACER+ begins at 12:20 AM ET / Saturday at 9:20 PM PT.