Sugo SUPER GT: Bandoh Toyota scores fourth pole of 2022

Sena Sakaguchi set a new lap record of 1m09.627s aboard the Yokohama-shod #19 Toyota GR Supra, breaking the three-year old benchmark held by Honda’s Koudai Tsukakoshi.

That was despite Sakaguchi being held up in the final part of the lap by the Nakajima Racing Honda of Takuya Izawa, who was summoned to the stewards for rejoining the track dangerously after an off at SP Corner.

Toyota secured a front-row lockout courtesy of Yuji Tachikawa in the Cerumo GR Supra, which was 0.378s behind the Bandoh car in second.

Nissan’s flagship NISMO Z qualified third in the hands of Tsugio Matsuda, 0.422s off the pace, but will drop to seventh owing to Matsuda’s four-place grid penalty.

That promotes the Team Kunimitsu Honda NSX-GT, in which Naoki Yamamoto set the fourth-fastest time, to third on the grid, the best of the cars carrying a fuel flow restrictor this weekend.

• Stream every qualifying session and race of the 2022 SUPER GT season only on Motorsport.tv.

Of the three cars carrying stage two fuel flow restrictors, only the Real Racing Honda made it out of Q1, with Nobuharu Matsushita qualifying fifth and being promoted to fourth on the grid by Matsuda’s penalty.

Yuichi Nakayama (SARD Toyota) and Ukyo Sasahara (Mugen Honda) move up to fifth and sixth, while Izawa was eighth in slowest in the Q2 pole shootout after his off.

Sasahara's teammate Toshiki Oyu had previously set a new lap record in Q1, which was later beaten in the second session by Sakaguchi on his way to pole position.

The #37 TOM’S Toyota and #3 NDDP Racing Nissan will start 10th and 11th respectively with their stage two restrictors after dropping out in Q1.

After its win last month at Suzuka, the points-leading Impul Nissan, the only car in the field with the stage three fuel restrictor, was 14th in the hands of Kazuki Hiramine.

Starting from the back of the GT500 grid will be the #36 TOM’S Toyota of Sho Tsuboi and Giuliano Alesi, which failed to set a time in Q1 after running into mechanical issues.

#96 K-tunes RC F GT3 (Photo by: Masahide Kamio)

K-tunes Racing scored pole position in the GT300 class with veteran driver Shinichi Takagi setting the top time of 1m17.373s aboard the team’s Lexus RC F GT3.

Takagi’s time was enough to take the top spot by an impressive margin of 0.318s ahead of the works Subaru BRZ of Hideki Yamauchi.

Completing an all-Dunlop top three was the LM Corsa Toyota GR Supra driven by Shunsuke Kohno, followed by the two Yokohama-shod JLOC Lamborghini Huracan GT3s.

Tsuchiya Engineering scored its best grid slot of the year so far with its new Supra, qualifying seventh after making it out of Q1 for the first time.

The points-leading Kondo Racing Nissan GT-R  NISMO GT3 of Kiyoto Fujinami and Joao Paulo de Oliveira, which is still carrying the maximum 100kg of success ballast, qualified ninth in the hands of Fujinami but will start 13th owing to de Oliveira’s four-place grid drop.

UPDATE: K-tunes was later stripped of its pole position after failing post-qualifying technical inspection, as the #96 Lexus was found to be carrying insufficient success weight.

It means the car shared by Takagi and Morio Nitta drops to the rear of the field, and promotes the Subaru of Yamauchi and Takuto Iguchi to a fourth GT300 pole position in four attempts at Sugo.

LM Corsa moves up to a spot on the front row ahead of the two JLOC Lamborghinis.

Also excluded from qualifying was the Team Mach Toyota 86 MC, which had qualified 18th, for not carrying the correct amount of fuel.

GT500 qualifying results:

Pos.	No.	Car	Drivers	Team	Tyre	Time
1	19	Toyota	Yuji Kunimoto  Sena Sakaguchi	Racing Project Bandoh	Y	1'09.627
2	38	Toyota	Hiroaki Ishiura  Yuji Tachikawa	Cerumo	B	1'10.005
3	23	Nissan	Tsugio Matsuda  Ronnie Quintarelli	NISMO	M	1'10.049*
4	100	Honda	Naoki Yamamoto  Tadasuke Makino	Kunimitsu	B	1'10.166
5	17	Honda	Nobuharu Matsushita  Koudai Tsukakoshi	Real Racing	B	1'10.268
6	39	Toyota	Yuichi Nakayama  Yuhi Sekiguchi	SARD	B	1'10.297
7	16	Honda	Toshiki Oyu  Ukyo Sasahara	Mugen	D	1'10.335
8	64	Honda	Takuya Izawa  Hiroki Otsu	Nakajima Racing	D	1'11.303
9	8	Honda	Nirei Fukuzumi  Tomoki Nojiri	ARTA	B	1'10.440 (Q1)
10	37	Toyota	Sacha Fenestraz  Ritomo Miyata	TOM'S	B	1'10.482
11	3	Nissan	Katsumasa Chiyo  Mitsunori Takaboshi	NDDP Racing	M	1'10.584
12	14	Toyota	Kenta Yamashita  Kazuya Oshima	Rookie Racing	B	1'10.669
13	24	Nissan	Kohei Hirate  Daiki Sasaki	Kondo Racing	Y	1'10.747
14	12	Nissan	Bertrand Baguette  Kazuki Hiramine	Impul	B	1'10.928
15	36	Toyota	Giuliano Alesi  Sho Tsuboi	TOM'S	B	no time

* will serve four-place grid penalty