NDDP Racing Waits Out Red Flags, Weather To Claim Dominant Fuji Victory

After a 45-minute red flag for a vehicle fire and heavy rainfall, the #3 Niterra Motul Nissan Z of Katsumasa Chiyo and Mitsunori Takaboshi drove through the field to win the Fuji GT 450km Race on Sunday.

Chiyo took his turn leading early on when the race began on a damp track, but Sunday’s 100-lap feature was defined following a scary fire for the #25 Hoppy Schatz Toyota GR Supra of Seita Nonaka which proved too much for a team of marshalls to contain (Nonaka quickly walked away without injury). Once the fire was extinguished and the car was removed, monsoon-level rain fell over Fuji Speedway.

Takaboshi started fourth on the ensuing restart, and using the full might of Michelin’s wet-weather tyres, he easily carved his way through three Toyota GR Supras and into the lead. He drove away to a merciless 45-second margin of victory in just 27 laps.

Chiyo and Takaboshi were stripped of a win two months ago at Suzuka when they failed to make their two compulsory pit stops before a race-ending crash, but this time they’d get to keep the winner’s trophy (post-race inspections pending!) and take the championship lead at the halfway point in the championship.

Behind them, the #16 ARTA Mugen Honda NSX-GT (Nirei Fukuzumi/Hiroki Otsu) drove to its first podium of the season in second, while the #100 Stanley NSX-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino) finished third, punctuated by Yamamoto overtaking three cars in the space of one lap, with eight laps remaining! The #64 Modulo NSX-GT (Takuya Izawa/Kakunoshin Ohta) took a season-best fourth place. A podium finish might well have been on the cards for the #8 ARTA NSX-GT (Tomoki Nojiri/Toshiki Oyu/Iori Kimura) – until Nojiri spun off at Panasonic Corner (turn 16) in a battle for fourth, and dropped out of the top ten completely.

Best of the Toyotas was the #36 au TOM’s GR Supra (Sho Tsuboi/Ritomo Miyata) which came back from 15th and last on the grid to fifth, ahead of the #38 ZENT Cerumo GR Supra (Yuji Tachikawa/Hiroaki Ishiura) finishing sixth in Tachikawa’s final race at Fuji Speedway.

An absolute mad scramble in GT300 ended up with the #11 Gainer TanaX Nissan GT-R GT3 of Ryuichiro Tomita, Keishi Ishikawa, and Yusuke Shiotsu taking full advantage of an early call to switch to slick tyres in the final laps to take an incredible come-from-behind win.

Tomita took a deficit of over 50 seconds and tore it to shreds around a drying Fuji Speedway, needing just eight laps to catch the leading #61 Subaru BRZ R&D Sport (Takuto Iguchi/Hideki Yamauchi), and just one more corner to pass Yamauchi for the lead.

A career-defining win for Tomita, the third of his career, and Ishikawa’s first since the 2019 race at Chang International Circuit in Thailand. (Shiotsu, for the second time in his career, would not run as the third driver on a winning crew.)

The final podium positions wouldn’t be settled until the final corners of the final lap. As the #61 Subaru and the #60 Syntium LM corsa GR Supra (Hiroki Yoshimoto/Shunsuke Kohno) slipped back in the closing seconds, the #7 Studie BMW M4 GT3 (Seiji Ara/Masataka Yanagida) went through into second place, and the #6 Dobot Audi R8 LMS  (Yoshiaki Katayama/Roberto Merhi/Seiya Jin) grabbed third! Capping it all off, Yoshimoto made contact with Yamauchi at the final corner, which puts the former’s fourth-place finish in jeopardy.

The second-place finish for Ara moves him into the GT300 championship lead after four races, while Team LeMans’ Audi recorded the team’s first podium since their move to GT300 two years ago.

GT300 looked to be won by the #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Tatsuya Kataoka) which led for much of the race, but after pitting for slicks, Taniguchi – normally a master in these mixed conditions – spun on his out lap and was eliminated from contention, finishing 12th.

The Autobacs SUPER GT Series returns in three weeks’ time to Suzuka Circuit for the summertime 450km race on 27 August.

Results to follow

Images © GTA