Nissan stays on top as Suzuka SUPER GT test concludes

As per the first day of running on Tuesday, Nissan squads locked out the top three positions as the Yokohama marque gears up to give the new Z GT500 car its race debut at Okayama in April.

The #23 NISMO car shared by Ronnie Quintarelli and Tsugio Matsuda logged the quickest time of the day in the morning session, a 1m44.515s, surpassing the Tuesday benchmark set by the #230 test car by over three tenths.

It was also faster than the best qualifying time at Suzuka set last year, a 1m44.733s, but it should be noted that the cooler conditions of winter tend to produce deceptively fast laptimes due to the relative thickness of the air increasing downforce.

Impul's Bridgestone-shod Z was second-fastest on a 1m44.659s, as new Nissan recruit Bertrand Baguette continued to accumulate mileage in the #12 car he'll share with Kazuki Hiramine this year.

The NDDP entry of Katsumasa Chiyo and Mitsunori Takaboshi, now operated by NISMO after the end of Nissan's agreement with B-Max, was third-fastest.

Toyota's developmental GR Supra was best of the rest in fourth. Yuji Tachikawa, Sho Tsuboi and Kenta Yamashita are among those known to be present at Suzuka, with Hiroaki Ishiura understood to be absent due to illness.

Honda's sole NSX-GT Type S, Real Racing's #17 machine, was fastest in the afternoon session but only fifth-fastest overall in the hands of Koudai Tsukakoshi and Nobuharu Matsushita, followed by the NISMO test car.

As per Tuesday, Honda was conducting a parallel test at Fuji Speedway with three more NSX-GTs running in Type S-spec: Nakajima Racing's #64 car, ARTA's #8 car and an additional test car.

Yokohama's two GT500 cars propped up the timesheets, the Kondo Racing Nissan leading the Racing Project Bandoh Toyota.

Both teams again elected to sit out the morning session as Yokohama aims to preserve its allocation of test running for the season.

Suzuka testing times:

Pos.	No.	Car/Team	Drivers	Morning	Afternoon
1	23	NISMO Nissan	Ronnie Quintarelli  Tsugio Matsuda	1'44.515	1'47.337
2	12	Impul Nissan	Bertrand Baguette  Kazuki Hiramine	1'44.659	1'45.683
3	3	NDDP Nissan	Katsumasa Chiyo  Mitsunori Takaboshi	1'44.724	1'46.455
4	90	Toyota	test car	1'44.823	1'45.036
5	17	Real Honda	Koudai Tsukakoshi  Nobuharu Matsushita	1'45.025	1'44.894
6	230	Nissan	test car	1'45.277	1'45.774
7	24	Kondo Nissan	Kohei Hirate  Daiki Sasaki	no time	1'45.820
8	19	Bandoh Toyota	Yuji Kunimoto  Sena Sakaguchi	no time	1'46.533