The REALIZE CORPORATION ADVAN Z wins pole position! In GT300, the GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG wins the class pole

Official Qualifying for the FUJI GT 450km RACE, Round 4 of the 2023 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series, took place on August 5th at Fuji Speedway (one lap 4,563 m) in Shizuoka Prefecture. Before a large gallery of fans who turned out to watch the action under fair skies and mid-summer weather, the GT500 class Pole Position was won by the excellent driving of Sasaki in the No. 24 REALIZE CORPORATION ADVAN Z (Daiki Sasaki/Kohei Hirate). The GT300 class pole was taken by Taniguchi in the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Tatsuya Kataoka), giving him his first pole in six years. These two teams will start from the front of their respective class grids in tomorrow’s race on August 6th.

In the summer heat that rose above 30 degrees Celsius, the 10-minute GT500 class Q1 qualifying session began at 3:20 in the afternoon. Again, the competition this time was extremely tight, with the top 13 cars recording times that bunched within the space of one second. And following up on its good speed shown in the morning’s official practice, it was the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN NSX-GT (Nirei Fukuzumi) that recorded the fastest time of 1’27.858 to move on to Q2. Following in 2nd position with a time of 1’27.935 came the No. 24 REALIZE CORPORATION ADVAN Z (Kohei Hirate). The third fastest time was run by the No. 8 ARTA MUGEN NSX-GT (Tomoki Nojiri) with a lap of 1’28.025. As for the No. 38 ZENT CERUMO GR Supra driven by Hiroaki Ishiura, his time of 1’28.273 was enough to give the team a place of 5th in Q1 as the only TOYOTA GR Supra GT500 car to move on to Q2 and ensure that his teammate Yuji Tachikawa, who has announced his retirement from SUPER GT as of this season, will get a chance to add to his personal record of most pole position career wins in SUPER GT.

In the GT500 class Q2, it was again the ARTA team that showed its speed, as the No. 16 ARTA MUGEN NSX-GT (Hiroki Otsu) recorded a time of 1’27.813, while the No. 8 ARTA MUGEN NSX-GT (Toshiki Oyu) also recorded a fine time of 1’27.852. It was looking as if the ARTA team was going to come out of the qualifying with a 1-2 finish. However, in the end it was the No. 24 REALIZE CORPORATION ADVAN Z (Daiki Sasaki) that came through with a time of 1’27.763 to take pole position. The same car No. 24 had also recorded the fastest time in the qualifying of the previous Round 3 at Suzuka, only to have that time disqualified because of an unexpected violation revealed in the post-qualifying car inspection, which left the team no qualifying time at all. So, the pole position this time at Fuji became a gratifying redemption.

With this, the cars No. 16 and No. 8 finished the qualifying in 2nd and 3rd positions respectively, from which they will surely be looking to come back for revenge in Sunday’s race. As for Tachikawa in car No. 38, running his final qualifying on Toyota’s home track of Fuji, his time of 1’28.326 left him in 7th position. In tomorrow’s race, however, he will surely be out to give a strong performance for the fans who will certainly turn out in great numbers to cheer for him.

The GT300 class Q1 session was competed in two groups, A and B, based on the team rankings after the previous round. In Group A, fastest time went to the No. 11 GAINER TANAX GT-R (Ryuichiro Tomita), while in Group B it was the No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG (Tatsuya Kataoka) that took the top time. In the class Q2 session competed by the fastest eight qualifiers from the two groups, for a total of 16 cars, it was again Taniguchi in car No. 4 who followed up on his top performances in both the morning practice and the A Group Q1 to outperform the competition with an impressive top time of 1’36.395. For Taniguchi, it was his first pole position since 2017 and his sixth overall.

■ Pole Position Driver Comments

No. 24 REALIZE CORPORATION ADVAN Z [GT500]

Daiki Sasaki: “For me, this felt like the worst time attack I had made in about the last year and a half, so I never expected to get the pole position with it. But it was the result of the great car set-up the team put together for us and the great tires that Yokohama Tire prepared for us. These are the tires we chose with tomorrow’s race in mind, so I am confident that they will perform well for us in the long run. The team has come together with great determination to get a good result this weekend, so I think we can make up for our failure in the last round at Suzuka (where we were unable to put our speed to good advantage). The car is fast, and we will be prepared if tomorrow (the race) will be run in dry weather. And if, as the forecast calls for rain, we will have good wet-use tires that Yokohama has proven the progress in with its test results. So, our feeling is that we can give it a good go in the rain as well. We hope that everyone will be looking forward to the performance of car No. 24.”

No. 4 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG [GT300]

Nobuteru Taniguchi: “Is this really my first pole in six years? I’ve forgotten (laughs). After I was finished driving, the team staff was telling me to “Hurry, hurry,” (to this interview). That was even more tiring for me than running my time attacks in the qualifying (laughs). I want to win again tomorrow (in the race), but I just hope it doesn’t rain. In Round 2 at Fuji, we had a good feeling too (until the car broke down), so I want to work together with Kataoka-san and the team to do our best.”

Results are HERE