One champion in, one out for Super GT's season finale at Motegi

The return of one past Super GT Series champion, and a curtain call for another, headlines the list of changes on the entry for the upcoming Motegi GT 250km Grand Final weekend on November 7-8 – along with the confirmed global racing debut of the new GR GT3 Concept by Toyota.

Ritomo Miyata, the 2023 GT500 champion, will return to the series for the first time since he clinched the title with a win at Mobility Resort Motegi. The Toyota works driver will be in the No. 7 CarGuy MKS Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo alongside fellow Toyota-backed youngster, 18-year-old Kiyoshi Umegaki.

After winning both the GT500 and Super Formula championships in the same year, Miyata has spent the last three seasons racing in the FIA Formula 2 Championship. He captured his first victory in the series at the Madring in Spain, but sits only 12th in the standings after finishing 19th and 17th in his first two years.

Now out of the frame for a Formula 1 promotion or a seat at Toyota Racing’s WEC program, rumors suggest that Miyata is expected to return to Super GT and Super Formula full-time in 2027.

Miyata replaces Formula E-bound Zak O’Sullivan, who was already due to miss the final Super Formula races at Suzuka on November 21-22 due to his participation in Formula E pre-season testing at Jarama, Spain. The Englishman has now been granted permission to leave Japan early to prepare for his new role with Envision Racing.

As one champion returns, another will make his final start in the series at Motegi. 57-year-old Manabu Orido, best known for his exploits in the as a pioneer of drifting, will retire from Super GT driving after a career that has spanned parts of 31 seasons in both GT300 and GT500.

Orido, who won the 1997 and 2009 GT300 championships for Racing Project Bandoh, will pilot the No. 30 apr Toyota GR86 in what will also be the final race for his longtime sponsor Yokohama as a tire supplier to Super GT. Bronze driver Hiroaki Nagai will stand down from driving duties to allow Orido and Hibiki Taira to run as a pro pairing.

Across both classes, Orido has taken eight victories and 34 podiums in the series, and has made the third-most starts in the series (221) behind only fellow GT300 champions Morio Nitta (239) and Shinichi Takagi (222). This includes a seven-year tenure as a Toyota GT500 driver with Team SARD and Tsuchiya Engineering, where he won the first championship race at Autopolis in 2003, and the first race for the series under the Super GT name, at Okayama in 2005.

Meanwhile, 18th-year Super GT veteran Tomonobu Fujii has lost out on his bid to win his first GT300 championship after an unusual post-race incident in Autopolis led the series to suspend the 46-year-old driver from the upcoming doubleheader in Motegi.

Fujii was given 10 penalty points for deliberate contact with the aforementioned No. 7 CarGuy Ferrari on the cooldown lap following the Autopolis 3 Hour Race, enough to trigger a weekend ban under Super GT’s Driving Moral Hazard Prevention System. He is the first driver to earn a race ban since 2017. The No. 777 D’station Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Fujii and co-driver Charlie Fagg was also given a two-lap penalty after the race for the infringement.

Replacing Fujii this weekend is Tsubasa Kondo, a two-time GT300 race winner and four-time Porsche Carrera Cup Japan champion.

Over the weekend, the No. 666 Seven x Seven Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R and No. 88 JLOC Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 were disqualified from the Autopolis 3H for not completing their two required full-service pit stops under green flag conditions. The two cars finished second and fourth on the road, then were given post-race time penalties that dropped them to 11th and 12th – which have since been changed to total disqualifications upon further review by the GT Association.

This moves all other cars up two positions, including the championship-leading No. 56 Kondo Racing Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 of João Paulo de Oliveira and Iori Kimura, which has now been promoted from 14th to 12th and gained two additional points (REVISED AUTOPOLIS RESULTS).

Oliveira and Kimura now lead the absent O’Sullivan by 17 points going into the Sepang make-up race on November 7. Three contenders sit 20 points behind: Defending champions Naoya Gamou and Togo Suganami in the No. 65 LEON Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO, the No. 2 Inging Motorsport Toyota GR86 (Yuui Tsutsumi/Kazuhisa Urabe), and CarGuy MKS Racing’s Umegaki, who is trying to become the youngest-ever champion in series history.

With 25 points available for the class winner and a bonus point for pole position in each race, the No. 56 Nissan GT-R can clinch the GT300 championship one round early if it leaves the Sepang make-up race with a 27-point lead.

GT500 has no changes to its entry list, while a few of the smaller GT300 teams will rotate drivers between races at Motegi – including Suzuka winners Pacific Racing Team, which will run Nürburgring 24H class winner Rintaro Kubo in the first race, and regular driver Yuta Fujiwara in the second race alongside Yusuke Tomibayashi.