Honda sweeps front row for Super GT's Autopolis GT 3 Hours Race

For the fourth consecutive Autobacs Super GT Series round, two Honda HRC Prelude-GTs will lead the field to green after sweeping the front row in qualifying for the Autopolis GT 3 Hours Race.

RACER+ and RACER Network’s coverage of Sunday’s three-hour endurance race from Autopolis International Racing Course starts at 12:00 AM ET/Saturday 9:00 PM PT, with English-language commentary from Jonathan Green, Jon Massengale, and RJ O’Connell.

And for the second race in a row, it’s the Dunlop-clad No. 64 Nakajima Racing Honda of Riki Okusa and Igor Fraga on pole, leading the Bridgestone-clad No. 17 Real Racing Honda of Koudai Tsukakoshi and Yuto Nomura which won the previous round at Sportsland Sugo.

Fraga and Okusa swept both legs of the two-stage knockout qualifying; Fraga led Q1 with a 1m32.550s, putting him four-tenths of a second ahead of the next-fastest car – another Honda, the No. 100 Team Kunimitsu car of Naoki Yamamoto. Then, with a little tow from the No. 17 of Nomura, the No. 64 of Okusa led Q2 with a 1m32.414s, putting him on pole over Nomura by more than three-tenths of a second.

The No. 17 Honda, now second in the GT500 championship standings, will start second as Nomura set a 1m32.799s. Completing the top three was the No. 19 TGR Team Bandoh Toyota GR Supra GT500 (Yuji Kunimoto/Sena Sakaguchi), the only GT500 car on Yokohama tires.

Yamamoto and Tadasuke Makino will start fourth in the No. 100 Team Kunimitsu Honda, and the No. 12 Team Impul Nissan Z NISMO GT500 (Kazuki Hiramine/Bertrand Baguette) will start fifth alongside the No. 38 TGR Team Cerumo Toyota (Toshiki Oyu/Rikuto Kobayashi).

Championship leaders Sho Tsuboi and Kenta Yamashita will start eighth in the No. 36 TGR Team TOM’S Toyota.

GT500 RESULTS

Likewise, in GT300, the No. 61 R&D Sport Subaru BRZ led both Q1 and Q2 to qualify on pole position for the second time this year.

Takuto Iguchi put the flat-six powered BRZ on top of the first Q1 group with a 1m44.122s, setting co-driver Hideki Yamauchi up for a run at the pole in Q2. GT300’s qualifying king went four-tenths quicker than the field with a 1m42.677s, and Yamauchi extended his all-time record with his 18th career pole position.

Japanese-built GTA-GT300 cars locked out the top five places on the grid ahead of their mostly-European GT3 counterparts. The No. 2 Inging Motorsport Toyota GR86 (Yuui Tsutsumi/Kazuhisa Urabe) finished second in Q2, but will start fourth after Urabe and the No. 2 Toyota were given a two-place grid penalty for impeding another car.

That moves the No. 52 Saitama Green Brave Toyota GR Supra (Hiroki Yoshida/Seita Nonaka) up to second on the grid, and the No. 25 Tsuchiya Engineering GR Supra (Takamitsu Matsui/Ryota Horachi) to a season-best third. Completing the GTA-GT300 lockout was the No. 60 LM corsa Lexus LC500 (Hiroki Yoshimoto/Shunsuke Kohno), the winner last round at Sugo.

In sixth was the No. 7 CarGuy MKS Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo (Zak O’Sullivan/Kiyoshi Umegaki/Reimei Ito), the third-place car in the championship, starting ahead of the points-leading No. 56 Kondo Racing Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 (João Paulo de Oliveira/Iori Kimura) in 11th, and the No. 777 D’station Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo (Tomonobu Fujii/Charlie Fagg) down in 19th.

GT300 RESULTS