SUPER GT 2008
Round-Up : Rounds 5, 6 and 7

SUPER GT races are held once every month. As a result, when I went 'MIA' due to work schedule reasons and after that, working with my teammates in the 2008 MME race, 3 rounds of the 2008 SUPER GT took place, over a period of just a little over 2.5 months time. Now that I am back in action, it's catch-up time with this round-up report for SUPER GT 2008 Rounds 5, 6 and 7 at SPORTLANDS SUGO, SUZUKA, and TWIN RING MOTEGI respectively.

Round 5 : SUGO 300KM

Round 5, held at the SPORTSLAND SUGO circuit was a round totally dominated by the Honda NSX. It seemed as if suddenly the Honda teams found a sweet spot in the set-up of their race-cars for the SUGO circuit. Qualifying saw the Honda NSX locking out all top 3 positions in the starting grid, with pole going to the No. 18 TAKATA DOME NSX, and P2 & P3 going to the No. 17 REAL NSX and No. 1 ARTA NSX respectively. No. 100 RAYBRIG NSX took P7 while No. 32 EPSON NSX took P12 on the starting grid. The mighty R35 Nissan Skyline seemed to be at a loss on this circuit as the Lexus SC430 took positions 4, 5 & 6 after the 3 NSX'es and the top qualifying R35 being the No. 22 MOTUL AUTECH GT-R which took P8 on the starting grid, after the No. 100 RAYBRIG NSX.

Raceday and the race started at 14:12pm. The top-qualifying machines all came through the opening lap in their starting order, with the three NSX machines leading through the early stages of the race in the order of the No. 18 TAKATA DOME NSX (Takashi Kogure) first, followed by the No. 17 REAL NSX (Toshihiro Kaneishi) and the No. 1 ARTA NSX (Ralph Firman).

The No. 17 REAL collided with a back-lapper on lap 8, the No. 5 Proµ MACH-GO 320R (Tetsuji Tamanaka) which not only caused No.17 to lose ground but also costed it a drive-through penalty which more or less put paid to its challenge in this race. This brought No. 1 into 2nd position and the No. 25 ECLIPSE ADVAN SC430 (Takeshi Tsuchiya) into 3rd. After that the race developed into a duel between two NSX machines, with Kogure in No. 18 and Firman in the No. 1. At one point on the first corner of lap 30 there was a dangerous moment when Firman (No.1) held off on his braking until the last moment and nearly went into a spin while trying to nudge the nose of his machine into Kogure‘s (No.18) in-side on the turn. But there was no change in the order of the two lead machines before No. 1 made its routine pit stop at the end of lap 34. Changing only the rear tires and giving the wheel over to Takuya Izawa, No. 1 returned to the track. Next No. 18 made its pit stop and they too only changed the rear tires and Ryo Michigami was given the wheel. Although the pit work of No. 18 allowed Michigami to rejoin the race maintaining the lead, Izawa in the No.1 drove hard and was on Michigami‘s tail within a few laps. On the Rainbow Corner of lap 38 Izawa went wide onto the curb stones and lost time when he almost went off the track. Still Izawa continued pushing keeping the pressure on No. 18. Eventually, the two machines came up behind two GT300 machines on the last corner of lap 62. In another attempt to overtake, Izawa took the outside of the turn but lost control of his NSX, ran off the track and hit the tire barrier. Suffering considerable damage to the machine's front end, Izawa returned to the pit and was unable to return to the race. This took the immediate pressure off Michigami in No.18 and allowed him to switch to controlled cruising, maintaining his lead via reports from the pit on the positions and gaps of the competitors chasing him. He drove on unchallenged to the checkered flag. For the No. 18 TAKATA DOME NSX (Ryo Michigami/Takashi Kogure) this was their first win of the season. More significantly, tt has also moved them into the lead in the series ranking. This victory also gave the NSX teams their first victory of the 2008 season.

Nevertheless, for Honda as a whole, this round can be a somewhat bittersweet one. Both the other 2 leading NSX'es crashed out of contention and while it is a given that professional race drivers will always go for the win whenever the circumstances allows it, from the spectator - and supporter - point of view, one wonder if this might be better if tempered with some restraint. After all, the reckless pursuit of the win caused the No.1 ARTA NSX a virtual certain P2 finish and extremely valuable championship points. And their challenge in this year's SUPER GT season is not exactly flourishing so from this viewpoint, might it not be more prudent to have settled for the P2 position ? After all, in many similar cases in Formula-1, numerous teams and drivers have taken exactly this approach for the sake of the championship.

The DNF of the No.1 ARTA NSX and the fate that befelled the No. 17 REAL NSX meant that P2 to P4 in the race fell to the 3 Lexus SC430s that qualified behind them. This allowed them to cement their positions and consequently the No. 38 ZENT CERUMO SC430 which quietly finished 3rd in the race has now climbed to P2 in both the drivers and teams championship rankings, trailing the leader No. 18 TAKATA by less than 10 points in both cases.

No. 100 RAYBRIG NSX ran an uneventful (and perhaps smarter race than the No. 1 ARTA NSX) and like the 3 Lexus'es, finished the race 2 positions higher than they qualified at, in P5. This brought them up to P8 in the drivers championship, up from P10 and also reinforced their P8 position in the teams championship, a commendable result and not something which can be said for the No.1 ARTA NSX team (which dropped way down in both standings). Meanwhile the No. 32 EPSON NSX retired from the race, despite gaining positions steadily from the start. On lap 38, it was hit from behind by the No. 12 CALSONIC GT-R and became beached on 'Horseback' corner, forcing its retirement.

Round 6 : POKKA 1000Km AT SUZUKA

Round 6 was held at the SUZUKA circuit as the POKKA 1000km. Qualifying for this race was a wet affair. In fact, it had rained so badly on qualifying day that the GT-A, organisers of the SUPER GT, had to cancel the Super-Lap session which is held in the afternoon. As a result, the starting grid was determined only from the times clocked in the morning qualifying session (which was also a wet affair). The fastest time in this morning session was done by the No. 100 RAYBRIG NSX carrying a paltry 10kg weight handicap. However, engine trouble forced an engine change for the car which, under the sporting regulations, meant a 10-place drop in the starting grid. As a result, pole position actually went to the No. 22 MOTUL AUTECH (R35 Skyline) GT-R while the No. 100 RAYBRIG's actual start position was P11. This had also benefitted the No. 18 TAKATA NSX who had only managed a P10 in the morning session but was promoted to P9 as a result. Having won the previous round earns the No. 18 TAKATA NSX another 60kg extra weight handicap, upping the 50kg they carried at SUGO to a massive 110kg for this round !

For qualifying, the NSX again did pretty well this round with P2 and P3 on the starting grid again occupied by the No. 17 REAL NSX and No. 1 ARTA NSX respectively. But the No. 32 EPSON NSX had a rather poor qualifying and ended P12 on the grid.

But bad-luck hits the NSX teams again on race-day. The No. 18 TAKATA DOME NSX was the first, developing suspension trouble. Seeing this, the No. 100 RAYBRIG NSX crew checked their suspension and found an irregularity too. Due to the necessary repair work, both NSXs had to start from the pit lane. The only consolation from this near disaster was that both problems were spotted early and thus repaired before they could adversely affect the respective car's race. Also, both cars were not exactly high up in the starting grid, No. 100 RAYBRIG's original P11 starting position actually being 6th from bottom and so for the benefit of catching and fixing that suspension problem, starting from the pit-lane was in reality not that much of a loss after all.

Round 6 is actually something of an endurance race, as race distance is 1000km which means it takes almost 6 hours to complete. So for this race, teams are allowed to nominate a 3rd driver to complement the 2 regular drivers though sporting regulations do not mandate that this 3rd driver must drive. Consequently some teams actually raced with just their 2 regular drivers, keeping the 3rd driver as something like a reserve, in case any of the 2 regulars needs relief. With the usual afternoon race start-time (1pm), the race will run late into the evening, ending at night-fall (around 7pm). Teams raced this round much like it was a semi-endurance race with up to 4 scheduled pit-stops.

Round 6 is a story of the grit and determination of the No. 100 RAYBRIG NSX. Despite having to start from the pit-lane, the No. 100 RAYBRIG NSX piloted by Yuji Ide and Shinya Hosokawa made steady progress through the field throughout the race. Ide started the race and in just the first three laps he had passed all the GT300 class machines, and by lap 20 he was running in 11th position. He continued to pass machine after machine until he was in 6th position by the time he pulled into the pit on lap 28. After that, Hosokawa took over and No. 100 continued its climb, passing No. 36 (Juichi Wakisaka) on lap 52 to move into 4th position. On lap 55 they also passed the No.17 REAL NSX, which moved them into 2nd position. They maintained this P2 position even after they and all the leading cars had completed their second routine pit stops by around lap 70. At this point No. 22 (Krumm) had moved into the lead, followed by No. 100 (Ide) in 2nd and No. 12 (Sebastien Philippe). Race leader No. 22 made its third pit stop on lap 86 while No. 100 and No.12 made theirs on lap 100. When everyone had completed their 3rd pit-stop, the order remained with the No. 22 now piloted by Yanagida in the the lead and Hosokawa in No. 100 in 2nd position. But, after No. 22 made its fourth pit stop on lap 115 and changed drivers to Dominik Schwager, trouble struck in the form of a loosening cowl. It developed into a dangerous state where the air pressure on right-hand turns was causing the cowl to nearly blow off. Three laps later Schwager was forced to bring the car into the pit again for repair, which dropped the team out of contention for the lead. With this, No.100 (Hosokawa) was finally in the lead, followed by No. 12 (Matsuda) in 2nd and No. 23 (Motoyama) in 3rd.

The leading No. 100 made its next and last pit stop on lap 137, and No. 12 in 2nd made its on lap 138. No. 12's pit-crew was able to complete its pit work four seconds faster and Philippe returned to the race in front of No. 100 (Ide) ! At one point, the gap between the No. 12 (Philippe) and No. 100 (Ide) was only two second, but soon machine No. 100 developed a strange noise that made a concerned Ide slow his pace and let the gap widen. Fortunately at the same time, No. 23 (Treluyer) in 3rd position behind him also slowed drastically with what turned out to be trouble in its fuel supply system (which eventually dropped them out of P3 back to P8). No. 100 team principal Takahashi Kunimitsu smartly changed his strategy to conserve the car and to race to keep the P2 position. Similarly, with no more pressure from behind, Phillipe in No. 12 was also able to relax and enter cruising mode.

At 18:10, the “Lights ON” signal came on and the machines turned on their headlights for the final stretch of the race. The checkered began to wave at the end of lap 173 with the victory going to the No. 12 CALSONIC IMPUL GT-R (Tsugio Matsuda/Sebastien Philippe). This was the first win for the TEAM IMPUL team since round 6 at the Pokka 1000Km in 2006.

Finishing 2nd was the No. 100 RAYBRIG NSX (Yuji Ide/Shinya Hosokawa), nominated 3rd driver Kosuke Matsuura never drove. After suffered the pit start because of machine trouble just before the race, the team and its two drivers had made an awesome comeback to take a place on the podium. Third place went to the No. 36 PETRONAS TOM'S SC430 (Juichi Wakisaka/Andre Lotterer). Despite a costly penalty the team had recovered steadily to take the third spot on the podium.

As for the two NSX'es which started at the front of the grid (P2 and P3), defending champions No. 1 ARTA NSX was overtaken by the eventual winner No. 12 at the opening lap. This developed into a close fight between the two early in the race. Eventually the two cars made contact and No. 1 was apparently the worse off for it, with Ralph Firman pitting for a wheel/suspension check. No. 1 ARTA NSX also hit fellow No. 32 EPSON NSX on later on lap 54. Eventually they finished the race in a lowly P13, throwing away yet another opportunity to get some valuable championship points. The other high qualifier, the No. 17 REAL NSX despite being at the front of the pack for part of the race, eventually retired, finishing only 119 laps.

Also starting from the pit-lane, the No. 18 TAKATA NSX just did not have the pace of the No. 100 RAYBRIG NSX, probably due to the crippling 110kg weight handicap they had to carry for this round. They eventually finished in P12, sandwiched between the No. 32 EPSON NSX in P11 and the No. 1 ARTA in P13.

Round 7 - MOTEGI GT 300KM

Round 7 of the 2008 SUPER GT was held at Honda's MOTEGI circuit as the MOTEGI GT 300km race. This round saw the introduction of a new qualifying format, with the afternoon Super-Lap qualifying replaced by a 3-session 'knock-out' system similar to the 3-session qualifying format used in Formula-1. Now, all teams will first need to clock within 7% window (i.e. slowest allowed being 107% of the fastest time clocked), in order to be able to participate in the afternoon knock-out session. The afternoon knock-out session is divided into 3 sessions of 15min, 10min, and 10min each. And like Formula-1, the 1st session will allow 12 teams thru, with drop-outs filling positions P13 downwards on the starting grid. Session-2 allows 10 teams thru (i.e. dropping only 2 teams) and finally session-3 determines the top-10 starting grid positions. Both drivers are required to clock times in this knock-out session with strict rules about tyre use and so forth.

With no weight handicap since the last round, the defending champions (No. 1 ARTA NSX) continued to qualify well, taking P2 in the morning session and then breezing through the knock-out session to cement their P2 position in the starting grid. Meanwhile, despite their P12 finish in Round-7, No. 18 TAKATA NSX's weight handicap had only gone down to 90kg and so their qualifying woes continued to this round with them taking P11 on the starting grid. No. 100 RAYBRIG was 1 place behind, taking P12 on the grid, now holding a 50kg weight handicap thanks to their P2 finish last round. Immediately behind is the No. 17 REAL NSX. Meanwhile, the No. 32 EPSON NSX was hit by bad-luck again, a broken radiator putting them out of the whole knock-out session. With no time set, they were relegated to the last place on the starting grid. Nevertheless, a spate of bad finishes or DNFs in the last few rounds meant that the No. 32 EPSON raced this round exploiting the '+1' performance upgrade rule on the sporting regulations (either reducing car weight or enlarging intake restrictor).

After so many bad results, the No. 1 ARTA NSX finally had a good race in this round. For once they had an uneventful race, starting the race in P2 and holding P2 throughout the race. They did try to challenge for the lead of course but this time through pit strategy, changing only the rear tyres during their single pit-stop. But it was not enough and there was never any real battle between the No. 3 YellowHat YMS TOMICA (R35) GT-R and the No. 1 ARTA NSX and after 63 laps, the race ended with the top 2 places going to the top 2 qualifiers in their order, the No. 3 YellowHat GT-R winning the race and No. 1 ARTA NSX taking P2. This is the only other good finish for the ARTA NSX this season, the other being a P3 podium in Round 2 at the OKAYAMA circuit. In all the other races, they scored little or no points, often only the 1 solitary point awarded for being able to finish the race.

Of the other NSX machines, the No. 100 RAYBRIG NSX was in P12 on the starting grid but could not make the start due to a problem with the starter motor. This was eventually repaired 2 laps after the race started. No. 100 RAYBRIG finished the race in P16 or last in GT-500.

For the No. 18 TAKATA NSX, it had a reasonable race, without any big incidents and gained 3 places to finish P8 from their P11 starting position. This brought them 6 very useful championship points. No. 32 EPSON NSX too finally had a decent race, maybe even a bit spectecular as some might put it, climbing 11 places to finish P5 after starting 'dead last' on the grid !. Meanwhile No. 17 REAL NSX had another uneventful race and finished the same position they started, in P15.

CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS

The 2008 SUPER GT is run with 9 rounds so with the conclusion of Round 7, it means there are only 2 more rounds to go. Getting right to the most current points ranking, in the driver's championship standings, the No. 18 pair of Michigami and Kogure is now joint leaders with the No. 36 pair of Juichi Wakisaka and Andre Lotterer, both having 56 points. Of the two, Wakisaka/Lotterer actually scored more points - 5 more points in total - over the 7 races that have been run. However, the 'points consolidation' which takes place after round 7 allows teams to drop two of their worst results. This means that Michigami and Kogure was able to disregard the results of rounds 2 and 6 where they did not score any points. For them, it was as if rounds 2 and 6 are not counted. The losers in this case are Wakisaka & Lotterer, as they scored in every round so far and so after discarding the 2 rounds with the lowest scores (rounds 4 & 5 where they scored 4 and 1 points respectively), the drivers champion ranking ended up with them on a tie with No. 18. However, the rankings table actually has the No. 18 TAKATA NSX holding P1 with No. 36 in P2 because the sporting regulation rule for tie-breaker is that the team which had a better individual finish takes the advantage. So, as Michigami & Kogure had won round 5 while Wakisaka & Lotterer had never won any race so far, it is the No. 18 team which holds the advantage. Just purely coincidence or not, it is still rather nice that the rules has finally worked out in favour of a Honda team after so long.

After being at the top of the table for so long, the No. 22 and No. 23 GT-Rs are now in P3 and P4 respectively. Of the other NSX drivers, the No. 100 pair of Ide and Hosokawa are now in P8 while defending champions No. 1 pair of Firman and Izawa are 2 places lower in P10. At the risk of being labelled repetitous, again I have to write that from my point of view, if only they had raced with a bit more 'restraint' in a few of the earlier races, they might well be in a much higher position now. I suppose the race driver's instinct for winning is something we cannot fight but then sometimes one must look at the larger picture; winning the war is more important than winning every single battle.

Sadly, the bottom of the drivers championship is occupied by the last 2 NSX teams, the No. 32 pair of Duval and Hiranaka in P14 and the No. 17 Kaneishi cousins in P15, just 1 place up from 'dead last' (held by the No. 39 Toyota pair).

Drivers championship standings

18 Ryo Michigami, Takashi Kogure - 56pts
36 Juichi Wakisaka, Andre Lotterer - 56pts
22 Michael Krumm, Masataka Yanagida - 51pts
23 Satoshi Motoyama, Benoit Treluyer - 50pts
38 Yuji Tachikawa, Richard Lyons - 49pts
12 Tsugio Matsuda, Sebastien Philippe - 40pts
100 Yuji Ide, Shinya Hosokawa - 39pts
35 Peter Dumbreck, Tatsuya Kataoka - 39pts
1 Ralph Firman, Takuya Izawa - 36pts
24 Joao Paulo Lima De Oliveira, Seiji Ara - 34pts
3 Ronnie Quintarelli, Naoki Yokomizo - 34pts
6 Daisuke Ito, Bjorn Wirdheim - 28pts
25 Takeshi Tsuchiya, Hiroaki Ishiura - 20pts
32 Loic DUVAL, Katsuyuki Hiranaka - 18pts
17 Katsutomo Kaneishi, Toshihiro Kaneishi - 15pts
39 Toranosuke Takagi, Andre Couto - 5pts

Note : the standings are compiled based on teams only. Some teams had driver changes plus all teams had a 3rd driver in round 5. The official rankings table lists all drivers but for our report, we compiled based on team for the sake of consistency

In the teams championship rankings, we don't get the benefit of the points consolidation as in the drivers championship and so every round counts. In addition, teams gets more points awarded per race for the team championship than for the drivers championship. Points are awarded to the team whenever they finish the race (3 points for those that did not get lapped, 2 points for those that gets lapped once and 1 point for all the others, meaning that all finishers gets at least 1 point and only a DNF will nett zero points for a team). As a result, the teams championship standings had the No. 36 PETRONAS TOYOTA TEAM TOM's (Lexus SC430) in the lead over No. 18 (TAKATA) DOME RACING TEAM, with a rather big 14 points lead.

P3 is held by another Toyota team, the No. 38 TOYOTA TEAM CERUMO while the NISMO pair of No. 22 and No. 23 holds P4 and P5. No. 100 TEAM KUNIMITSU (running the RAYBRIG NSX) is now in P7 while the No. 32 NAKAJIMA RACING (running the EPSON NSX) and No. 17 REAL RACING with LEON team (running the REAL NSX) is lamenting at the bottom in P14 and P15 respectively, again just in front of the last place No. 39 SARD TOYOTA.

Finally the defending champions No. 1 ARTA is now in P12. Again, if only they had raced with more restraint and exploited their good positions in a number of the early rounds, they'll be much higher in the championship. For e.g. they qualified way up on rounds 5 & 6 and were racing in P2 for most of the time but eventually they perhaps pushed too hard to try to improve their positions and eventually made mistakes resulting in either DNF'ed or a poor finish. As it is now, at P12 and a massive 43 points deficit to the leader and with only 2 more rounds to go, their title chase is as good as over. The maximum possible points that can be scored each race is 23 points, meaning the max they can add to their current points is 46 more. So even if they win and scored maximum in both the last 2 rounds, they will still need the No. 36 team to have two consecutive disasters and score not more than 3 points in both races before they can win the title. Unfortunately, we have to be realistic on how likely this is going to happen.

Teams championship standings

36 PETRONAS TOYOTA TEAM TOM'S - 81pts
18 DOME RACING TEAM - 67pts
38 TOYOTA TEAM CERUMO - 64pts
23 NISMO - 59pts
22 NISMO - 58pts
35 TOYOTA TEAM KRAFT - 58pts
100 TEAM KUNIMITSU - 55pts
24 KONDO RACING - 54pts
12 TEAM IMPUL - 51pts
6 ENEOS TOYOTA Team LeMans - 47pts
3 HASEMI MOTOR SPORT - 44pts
1 AUTOBACS RACING TEAM AGURI (ARTA) - 38pts
25 TOYOTA TEAM TSUCHIYA - 36pts
32 NAKAJIMA RACING - 31pts
17 REAL RACING with LEON - 24pts
39 TOYOTA TEAM SARD - 17pts

The 2008 SUPER GT season comes to an exciting phase for Honda fans, with the No. 18 TAKATA NSX this year having a good chance of winning at least the drivers championship. Round 7 will take place at the KYUSHU circuit as another sprint-format 300km race over the weekend of October 17-19, around 3 weeks away. For No. 18 TAKATA NSX, running a smart race and bringing in points will be crucial now. We will of course continue to bring the race results to you so check back here after that weekend.