Super GT kicks back into gear at Autopolis

Japan’s Autobacs Super GT Series resumes this weekend for its sixth race of the 2026 season, a three-hour race at the Autopolis International Racing Course located on Japan’s southernmost main island of Kyushu. It’s the final stop on the calendar before the Super GT season ends with a championship-deciding doubleheader at Mobility Resort Motegi on Nov. 7–8. RACER+ and RACER Network will have live coverage of the race, starting Sunday at midnight ET with English commentary provided by Speed City Broadcasting’s Jonathan Green and Jon Massengale, plus RACER correspondent RJ O’Connell.

Situated near Mount Aso, some 60 miles south of the city of Fukuoka, Autopolis is a name that may sound familiar to Formula 1 fans of a certain vintage who may only know the circuit as a prospective Grand Prix venue before those hopes were struck down the moment Japan’s bubble economy popped in the early 1990s. But since surviving threats of closure for most of the decade and under Kawasaki’s ownership since 2005, Autopolis has found a steady place on the Japanese racing calendar. 

More importantly, Autopolis is the heart of motor racing in Kyushu – where the people of the nearby city of Kumamoto will be on the minds of the competitors and many of the fans coming to see the race. 

It’s been less than three months since a devastating earthquake, the second major quake to hit the region in the last decade, left 38 people dead, hundreds injured and thousands more displaced from their homes. Super GT, its teams, and its partners have already provided emergency relief to those affected, and there will be further fundraising campaigns taking place on-site as the race has been designated as an official “Kumamoto Earthquake Recovery Support Event.”

Autopolis may not be as famous as Suzuka or Fuji but the track is no less challenging: It sits half a mile above sea level in thinner air; there’s relatively little runoff which punishes common driving errors; and the combination of an abrasive surface and a varied mix of slow, medium and high-speed corners will punish tires harder than any other track on the Super GT calendar.

TGR Team TOM’S, Sho Tsuboi, and Kenta Yamashita still hold a comfortable 13-point lead in the GT500 drivers’ championship with three races left, in search of an unprecedented fourth consecutive championship for the team, a record-breaking fifth title for Tsuboi, and a fourth for Yamashita. But the drivers of the No. 36 Toyota GR Supra GT500 will have another tough race on their hands. They’re loaded with the maximum Success Weight this weekend (50 kilos of ballast weight, reduced engine fuel flow limit, and the “Stage 2” success refueling restrictor) and scoring points could be a challenge.

More than half of the 14-car GT500 field will be above the 50kg Success Weight threshold this weekend. This is the last “full weight” race of the season before Motegi, where the Success Weight will be cut down to just 1kg per point in the first race of the weekend, before all Success Weight is removed for the finale the following day.

As such, Autopolis is the last chance for top contenders to score valuable points going into the Grand Final at Motegi, while for teams who’ve endured lost seasons, it could be their last chance to score a big result.

Honda actually swept the GT500 podium with the old Civic Type R-GT last year, and in 2026, the HRC Prelude GT has now won the last three races in a row. But a fourth straight win won’t come easy: Honda’s top four cars in the standings have plenty of Success Weight to battle with, including last year’s Autopolis winners Naoki Yamamoto and Tadasuke Makino (No. 100 Team Kunimitsu), and the winners last time at Sugo, Koudai Tsukakoshi and Yuto Nomura (No. 17 Real Racing). They currently sit third and second in points respectively.

Meanwhile, Nissan enters Autopolis needing a win soon to not only salvage any title hopes but to avoid the humiliation of a winless season. Its flagship NISMO team will get Katsumasa Chiyo back after he missed Sugo due to a foot injury suffered before the race weekend, so he’ll be back alongside Mitsunori Takaboshi in the No. 23 Nissan Z NISMO GT500. Sena Sakaguchi (No. 19 TGR Team Bandoh Toyota) will also race after recovering from an eye injury that forced him to miss last weekend’s Super Formula races in Fuji.

In GT300, the No. 56 Kondo Racing Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 of João Paulo de Oliveira and Iori Kimura took a massive 21-point lead out of Sugo, as they finished second while other title rivals floundered, including the No. 777 D’station Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo (Tomonobu Fujii/Charlie Fagg) which finished out of the points, and the No. 7 CarGuy MKS Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo (Zak O’Sullivan/Kiyoshi Umegaki/Reimei Ito) that ran out of fuel on the last lap.

Last year’s race at Autopolis marked the end of a perplexing 13-year winless drought for Porsche in Super GT as new customer team Seven x Seven Racing took the win in GT300. The No. 666 Porsche 911 GT3 R seems to be hitting its stride at the right moment, with factory Porsche driver Sven Müller leading the way, and rookie Taichi Watarai already finding good form after just two starts in the series.

Several drivers with local ties will be among the favorites for victory: Saitama Green Brave’s Hiroki Yoshida is from Kumamoto, while R&D Sport’s Takuto Iguchi, JLOC’s Yuya Motojima, and Team Mach with its No. 5 Toyota 86 MC all hail from Fukuoka Prefecture.

12 out of 29 GT300 teams will have extended three-driver crews, including two newcomers looking to get their first Super GT stints under their belts. 21-year-old Kento Omiya will be in the No. 45 Ponos Racing Ferrari after a solid second season in the Formula Regional Japanese Championship. 24-year-old Yusuke Mitsui, this year’s championship runner-up in Super Formula Lights, will be in the No. 26 Anest Iwata Racing Nissan Fairlady Z.

• RACER+ and RACER Network will have all the live action of Sunday’s race, what promises to be one of the highlights of the season, with coverage starting at 12:00am ET Sunday morning (9:00pm Saturday night on the West Coast).