SUPER GT 2009 Round 2 : KEIHIN SUZUKA 2&4 RACE

Round 2 of the 2009 AUTOBACS SUPER GT championship took place at Honda's Suzuka Circuit in the Mie Pref. on the April 18th and 19th weekend. In the qualifying, defending champions No. 1 MOTUL AUTECH GT-R with Satoshi Motoyama at the wheels won the pole position.

In the first qualifying session in the morning, Motoyama recorded the second fastest lap time behind Yuji Tachikawa in the No. 38 ZENT CERUMO SC430. In the afternoon's Super Lap session (for the top 8 qualifiers in the morning session), Motoyama was the second to the last runner and took the lead by recording a time of 1 min. 53.487 sec. As the last runner, Tachikawa was unable to beat Motoyama's time, thus giving the pole position to Motoyama and the MOTUL AUTECH GT-R team. This pole was Motoyama's second career pole position in the GT500 class and the first for the Nissan GT-R this season. Another R35, the No. 3 HASEMI TOMICA EBBRO GT-R took P3.

The NSX teams again qualified reasonably well, with everyone except the No. 8 ARTA NSX qualifying in the top-10. No. 17 Keihin NSX took P6 with No. 100 Raybrig one position behind in P7, and No. 18 Rockstar-Dome another position behind in P8. Yet another position behind was No. 32 Epson NSX in P9. Out of the top-10 was No. 8 ARTA in P13, actually 2nd last place on the GT-500 grid.

On race-day however, it was the Toyota (Lexus) which staged a dramatic come-from-behind to take the win. The 52 laps race ran on April 19, starting exactly at 14:00pm. In the early stages of the race there was a close race for the lead between the pole starting No. 1 MOTUL AUTECH GT-R driven by Satoshi Motoyama and the No. 38 ZENT CERUMO SC430 driven by Richard Lyons. The ZENT CERUMO team's routine pit stop took longer than its rivals and by the time Tachikawa got on the track for his stint after the driver change, the SC430 had dropped to 4th position. Undaunted, Tachikawa began his chase and soon recovered to 3rd position. In the meantime, the MOTUL AUTECH GT-R running alone in the lead was having tire trouble and lost speed. This allowed the PETRONAS TOM'S SC430 to take the lead and Tachikawa moved into 2nd. Then Tachikawa pushed on to work his way past PETRONAS TOM'S SC430 driven by Jyuichi Wakisaka with four laps remaining in the race.

Just after this, there was a multi-car crash behind the leaders that brought out the safety car while the track was being cleared. Eventually the race ended with the leaders running in the same order behind the safety car, giving the ZENT CERUMO SC430 a well-earned come-from-behind victory. P3 went to the No. 12 IMPUL CALSONIC (R35) GT-R.

This win was Tachikawa's 11th in his illustrious SUPER GT career, moving him one ahead of Satoshi Motoyama with a new all-time record of most wins. This win also put a stop to the Nissan R35 GT-R's winning streak that had continued since round six of last season at Suzuka (a straight 5 wins in a row). For the Lexus SC430 this was the first victory since the same team of Tachikawa and Lyons won round three of the 2008 season.

Honda continued to do reasonably well in this 2nd race, with the No. 18 Rockstar-Dome NSX taking P5 and No. 17 Keihin NSX 1 position behind in P6. No. 32 Epson is the other NSX to finish in the top-10, in P9. No. 100 Raybrig NSX finished in P12 while No. 18 ARTA finished in P14, actually last place in the GT-500 grid.