Super GT 2016 Rounds 3 and 8 - The Best Of Times And The Worst Of Times
Image credits: SuperGT |
The finale for this season's Super GT
championship was unusual in that instead of one final race the
weekend would see a double-header to make up for the canceled third
round at Autopolis due to the Kumamoto earthquake earlier this year.
Instead of one big race to decide the championship this year Twin
Ring Motegi would instead play host to one 250 kilometer race on
Friday as round three and another 250K race on Saturday for the
actual final race.
Going into the weekend the #1 Motul
Autech GT-R piloted by Tsugio Matsuda and Ronnie Quintarelli looked
set to do something that had never occurred before in the history of
Super GT – win three consecutive driver's titles. With an 11 point
lead they looked like a sure bet but with the unusual double-race
format offering up a maximum total of 42 points there were still a
lot of cars in with a chance to break the Nismo team's hotstreak.
With only a 31 point spread from the
first ranked car to the tenth, and a mere three points between first
and second, GT300 was even more unpredictable. The #25 VivaC 86 was
in the lead thanks to its win at the last round in Thailand but the
#3 B-Max NDDP GT-R was a close second.
Instead of holding qualifying the day
before, this time the sessions would be held in the mornings before
the two afternoon races. Unfortunately for the Nissan runners the
first qualifying session didn't go well with the defending champions
mired in an uncharacteristic twelfth position out of the fifteen
GT500 cars. The other GT-Rs were also in fairly unspectacular
positions except for the #24 Forum Engineering car that had somehow
found the speed the other R35s lacked to put itself into second. The
rest of the top spots were taken by Lexus cars, with the #39 Denso
Sard car of Heikki Kovalainen and Kohei Hirate earning the pole.
The news wasn't much better in GT300
for Nissan with the #3 B-Max car landing in a horrible 21st
starting position while the VivaC 86 it was chasing was way up in
7th. Pole went to the #11 Gainer Tainax AMG GT.
The start of the race saw the Denso RC
F maintain its speed advantage from qualifying and it leapt to an
early lead. The same was true for the Gainer AMG in GT300. Things got
bunched up again quickly however when amazingly two different crashes
occurred almost simultaneously under both of the two bridges on the
course. Both the #5 86 and the #55 ARTA BMW M6 crashed with the
latter obliterating its entire front end. This brought out the safety
car to allow for the lengthy cleanup.
Once racing got underway the #39 RC F
bolted again and it was starting to look like this would be a rout by
the pole winner. Meanwhile the #1 Nissan was barely making any
headway in the back of the field. The pit sequence really changed the
complexion of the race however as the #24 GT-R decided to gamble by
not swapping tires and taking a late pit stop on lap 31 of the 53-lap
race. This allowed it to rejoin in front of the #36 au Tom's RC-F
that had also leapfrogged the previously leading #39 Lexus during the
pit sequence. Meanwhile in GT300 the #21 Hitotsuyama Audi R8 had also
managed to gain the lead over the Gainer car thanks to a good pit
stop.
The #39 still had its speed though and
it overtook the au car eight laps later. Kohei Hirate then set off to
hunt down Masataka Yanagida in the leading Nissan. As the laps wound
down it was clear the Lexus had the speed advantage as it was soon
right on the tail of the #24 car. GT300 was also seeing a battle for
the lead as the #33 Excellence Porsche was making a late race run on
the leading Audi.
Both Yanagida in the Forum Engineering
GT-R and Richard Lyons in the Audi pulled off great defensive drives
however and took the wins in the two classes. Yanagida worked
especially hard with the gap at the end being a mere 0.2 of a second.
This was the #24 car's second win of the season and was some comfort
to the Nissan camp which had seen the #1 car finish a dismal 9th
and salvaging only two points from the race. Meanwhile the #39 car
had leapt into the lead of the championship by three points thanks to
its second place finish.
The Vivac 86 did a better job of
defending its lead by finishing 7th while its main
championship rival finished with no points. The #3 GT-R lost ground
on the leader and ended up still in second but now with a nine-point
gap to surmount.
Day two of the double-header offered a
chance for the Nissan crews to make up for the poor performance of
all but the #24 car on Friday. Sadly, qualifying wasn't too much
better with the #1 car bettering its previous day's position by
getting 9th but the leading #39 Lexus again cruised to the
pole. The Forum Engineering GT-R couldn't repeat its previous pace
and ended up in a much poorer 12th grid slot.
The story for the #1 Nissan was echoed
by the #3 GT-R. Although it improved its qualifying position by
getting 14th instead of 21st this time, the
championship leading VivaC car stayed way ahead in sixth.
The race didn't have any fortuitous
twists for Nissan either. The #39 Denso Sard car cruised to the win
from its pole position start. The defending champions tried their
hardest and even took the same gamble the #24 car took the previous
day of not changing tires but it was all for naught as they could
only manage 7th. This gave the Denso Sard team their first
championship since joining Super GT in the earliest days of the
series when it was still known as the Japan GT Championship.
It wasn't as easy for the eventual
GT300 title winners as they needed a shrewd strategic decision to
take the race win. The VivaC 86 started in sixth while the #31 apr
Prius was on pole and pulled away early. The #25 car decided to
gamble with an early pit stop and this ended up putting it in good
track position right behind the Prius towards the end of the race.
The VivaC car eventually overhauled the Prius to take the win and the
season title. Congratulations to both the title-winning teams on their great efforts!
And so, 2016 ends on a low for the
Nissan camp that looked so sure to take another title in GT500. With
amazing back-to-back wins at the start of the season it really looked
like the #1 Motul Autech car had the legs on everyone. The titles
going to a different manufacturer shows the quality of the racing in
Super GT however and Nissan can still take pride in the fact that
their cars won more races than any other manufacturer this year just
as in the previous two seasons that saw them win titles. Losing out
on this year's championships will surely make Nissan more determined
than ever to regain them and with new cars coming next year it's
certain to be another great season of racing in 2017.
Once again Nismo.TV livestreamed the
races with the help of RadioLeMans and here are the links to both of
them:
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