Fuji SUPER GT: Honda takes pole on Toyota's home turf

Free of any success ballast following a disastrous result in the season opener, Makino lapped the Toyota-owned circuit in 1m26.420s in the #100 Honda NSX-GT Type S to take Team Kunimitsu team’s first pole position since last year’s finale at Motegi.

Makino secured the top spot in qualifying by 0.076s from the Racing Project Bandoh Toyota of Sena Sakaguchi, who was again able to take advantage of the one-lap prowess of Yokohama tyres to secure a spot on the front row of the grid.

ARTA’s two Honda cars took first and second in the first part of qualifying but come the all-important pole shootout the team’s best entry could only qualify third, with Nirei Fukuzumi ending up 0.189s off the pace in the #16 NSX-GT.

Kazuya Oshima left it until the very end to set his best lap, helping the Rookie Racing Toyota team jump from eighth to fourth with a time of 1m26.473s.

Fifth place went to Kohei Hirate in the Kondo Racing Nissan, the only car from the defending champion manufacturer that was able to gain a spot in Q2.

Hirate was the first driver to set a flying lap in his session and his time of 1m26.779s was good enough to put him ahead of the #36 TOM’S Toyota GR Supra driven by Riyomo Miyata, who arrived at Fuji fresh from his maiden Super Formula win at Suzuka last month.

Tomoki Nojiri was a disappointing seventh in the second of the two ARTA entries, while Nobuharu Matsushita was the slowest of the Q2 runners in the Real Racing Honda, albeit just over half a second of the pace in a closely-contested qualifying session.

The two NISMO-entered Nissan Zs will share the fifth row of the grid, with the #3 NDDP entry starting ninth ahead of the flagship #23 machine.

Mitsunori Takaboshi set a best time of 1m27.538s in Q1, nearly a second down on the best time of the session, while Tsugio Matsuda was fractionally slower than his Nissan stablemate at 1m27.584.

Both cars are carrying heavy ballast into the Fuji round following their 1-2 result in the Okayama, with the #23 Nissan hobbled by 42kg of extra weight and the #3 car running 30kg heavier than usual.

The Bridgestone-shod Impul Nissan was also eliminated in Q1 despite having only 10kg ballast, with Kazuki Hiramine’s time only good enough to qualify 12th, behind the #7 TOM’S Toyota of Ukyo Sasahara.

The sole Dunlop-shod car on the grid, the Nakajima Racing Honda, qualified a distant 14th with Kakunoshin Ota at the wheel, while the GT500 field was propped up by the SARD Toyota driven by Yuhi Sekiguchi.

Kondo Nissan grabs pole in GT300

Nissan enjoyed much better fortunes in the GT300 division with Joao Paulo de Oliveira taking pole position in Kondo Racing’s #56 Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3.

 

De Oliveira, a two-time GT300 champion with Kondo, set a best time of 1m35.114s in Q2, taking the top spot by 0.062s from the #31 apr Lexus LC500h driven by Kazuto Kotaka.

It was Kondo’s first pole position in GT300 class since the first Fuji event of 2019, when de Oliveira’s former teammate Kazuki Hiramine and current Nissan Formula E driver Sacha Fenestraz drove for the squad.

Nobuteru Taniguchi moved up to third late on in the #4 Goodsmile Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3, demoting the #52 Saitama Toyopet Toyota GR Supra GT300 of Kohta Kawaii to the outside of the second row, while the Inging Toyota GR86 of Yuui Tsutsumi completed the top five.

The Okayama-winning UpGarage Honda team barely scraped into Q2 and didn’t fare much better when Takashi Kobayashi took over driving duties from Shun Koide, ending up 16th on the grid.

Takuto Iguchi was unable to guide Subaru into the second part of qualifying, missing out on the Q2 cut by just over a tenth of a second.

That leaves the R&D Sport-run team 19th on the grid for the most prestigious race of the season, two spots ahead of the Team Studie BMW that also failed to progress into Q2 with Seiji Ara at the wheel.

GT500 qualifying results:

Pos.	No.	Car	Drivers	Team	Tyre	Time
1	100	Honda	Naoki Yamamoto  Tadasuke Makino	Kunimitsu	B	1'26.420
2	19	Toyota	Yuji Kunimoto  Sena Sakaguchi	Racing Project Bandoh	Y	1'26.496
3	16	Honda	Nirei Fukuzumi  Hiroki Otsu	ARTA	B	1'26.609
4	14	Toyota	Kenta Yamashita  Kazuya Oshima	Rookie Racing	B	1'26.743
5	24	Nissan	Kohei Hirate  Daiki Sasaki	Kondo Racing	Y	1'26.779
6	36	Toyota	Sho Tsuboi  Ritomo Miyata	TOM'S	B	1'26.786
7	8	Honda	Tomoki Nojiri  Toshiki Oyu	ARTA	B	1'26.816
8	17	Honda	Nobuharu Matsushita  Koudai Tsukakoshi	Real Racing	B	1'26.953
9	3	Nissan	Katsumasa Chiyo  Mitsunori Takaboshi	NDDP Racing	M	1'27.538 (Q1)
10	23	Nissan	Tsugio Matsuda  Ronnie Quintarelli	NISMO	M	1'27.584
11	37	Toyota	Ukyo Sasahara  Giuliano Alesi	TOM'S	B	1'27.649
12	1	Nissan	Bertrand Baguette  Kazuki Hiramine	Impul	B	1'27.704
13	38	Toyota	Hiroaki Ishiura  Yuji Tachikawa	Cerumo	B	1'27.864
14	64	Honda	Takuya Izawa  Kakunoshin Ota	Nakajima Racing	D	1'27.912
15	39	Toyota	Yuhi Sekiguchi  Yuichi Nakayama	SARD	B	1'28.286