The #36 car of Sho Tsuboi and GT500 rookie Giuliano Alesi came home sixth despite dominating much of official pre-season testing, while the sister #37 machine duo of Sacha Fenestraz and Ritomo Miyata fared even worse, ending up a point-less 11th.
On the #36 side of the garage, it was always clear that Alesi was going to be up against it on his first GT500 start. He may have had 10 days of pre-season testing to get used to the GR Supra, including four days at Okayama, with the advantage of working with largely the same group of people at TOM’S he’d become familiar with in Super Formula last year, but he never looked like matching the scorching pace of reigning champion Tsuboi.
