Capricious weather sees GT-R miss out on podium

Okayama International Circuit, Okayama - On April 5th (Sun) the 300km opening round race for this year's SUPER GT was held at Okayama International Circuit (1 lap 3.7km) in Mimasaka, Okayama Prefecture. Here, despite all NISSAN GT-R NISMO GT500s displaying strong initial performance, each car found themselves plagued by various troubles under the unpredictable weather conditions and were unfortunately unable to reach the podium in this, the first race of the season.

The #23 MOTUL AUTECH GT-R (Tsugio Matsuda / Ronnie Quintarelli) began the race from 4th place on the grid, the highest starting position of all the GT-Rs, and in wet conditions under an overcast sky, began to move up through the ranks in the early stages of the race. As early as the 5th lap they had climbed up to 2nd place and by lap 17 they overtook the leading #37 Lexus RC-F to be running in overall race lead. From there it looked certain that they would continue to pull away from the competition, but suddenly at lap 22, they were forced to make an emergency pit when smoke began rising from the car's rear. The team hastily pulled the machine into the garage and began to replace the left and right brake assembly. This work ultimately took approximately 30 minutes and, despite being able to return to the race for the second half, they would end the race in 13th place. NISMO team principal Yutaka Suzuki lamented, "We made some errors in the temperature management of the brakes and this caused them to overheat. With Ronnie driving at such a good pace and Tsugio also running with a nice rhythm when he eventually took over, I really think we missed out on a podium today, which is disappointing." Driver Quintarelli commented, "This is the first time we've experienced trouble like this. It's a pretty unfortunate result, but until then the feel of the car was good and it's clear that the tires are up to par. I want to let all the fans know that we are really sorry we couldn't do a better job today."

Starting from 8th place, Hironobu Yasuda took the wheel for TEAM IMPUL's #12 Calsonic IMPUL GT-R (Hironobu Yasuda / Joao Paulo de Oliveira), which had hurriedly undergone repairs after catching alight during the previous day's practice runs. He gradually rose through the pack while skillfully fending off the leading competition and by lap 37 he was able to hand the car over to Oliveira having reached 3rd place. At this time the team made a judgment call based on how they foresaw the road conditions to develop and decided to change to fairly hard tires. However, as the race moved into its second half, the rainfall began to increase and the tires struggled to maintain any grip on the track. Oliveira managed to hold out for the entirety of the race but had no choice other than to fall back down through the order. After the race Oliveira reflected, "We decided to go with hard compound tires for the second half of the race. However, when it started to rain the car was almost uncontrollable. I was really struggling to stay on the track. It's extremely difficult to predict how the road conditions will change with weather like this."

Starting from 10th on the grid in the #46 S Road MOLA GT-R (Satoshi Motoyama / Masataka Yanagida) was Motoyama, who managed to hand the car over to Yanagida in 9th at the driver change. However, with the sudden change in the road track conditions, Yanagida was unable to lift their pace any further and they would remain in 8th place until they passed the checkered flag. Having qualified in 12th, the #24 D'station ADVAN GT-R (Daiki Sasaki / Lucas Ordonez) went onto experience a sequence of small problems that left them unable to develop a good rhythm and they completed the race in 11th place.

In the GT300 the #10 GAINER TANAX GT-R (Andre Couto / Chiyo Katsumasa) secured pole position. Although they also found themselves hampered by the difficult conditions, they still managed to finish the race in 7th, the highest placing of the GT-Rs in their class. Furthermore, despite falling back 2 places, the #3 B-MAX NDDP GT-R (Kazuki Hoshino / Mitsunori Takaboshi) carried out a steady race that secured an 8th place finish and some valuable points. Team principal Masahiro Hasemi commended his team saying, "It was a very difficult race and the drivers did a great job. In a situation like that you have to praise the fact that they safely completed the race and grabbed points without damaging the car."

QUOTES:

Kunihiko Kakimoto, Executive director for Nissan related teams
"Today's result came about from the fact that all the Nissan teams were unable to effectively correspond to the changing conditions. However, we developed this year's GT-R GT500 with a focus on improving the output characteristics of the engine and the car's aerodynamic performance and it is clear that we are not being outdone by the competition when accelerating out of the corners. I don't think we've made any mistakes with the direction we've taken. We will use the lessons we've learned in this race to develop better strategies for the future and work even harder to ensure that we achieve a better result in the next round."

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[ GT 500 class ] - 82 laps

[ GT 300 class ] -77 laps