Only one venue has been a part of the Autobacs Super GT Series calendar for all twenty-six seasons – the picturesque, undulating Sportsland Sugo circuit, nestled in the woodlands of the Tohoku region of Japan in the rural town of Murata, Miyagi Prefecture – 60 kilometres northeast of the prefecture’s capital city of Sendai.

And the 26th running of the Sugo GT 300km Race represents the second half of a “Super Fortnight” for Super GT and the seventh and penultimate round of the 2019 season. Both the GT500 and GT300 class titles are still up for grabs this weekend and in the season finale at Twin Ring Motegi, but before the field heads to Motegi, they must first survive one of the fastest circuits on the calendar in Sugo, a 3.709 kilometer circuit with plenty of elevation changes and an abundance of medium and high-speed corners – including the signature right-hand 100R, a near flat-out ascent to the highest point of the circuit underneath the Dunlop Bridge on the home stretch.

For a quarter-century, Sportsland Sugo has seen countless moments that are etched forever into the lore of Super GT. Diehard fans won’t forget the incredible photo finishes in 2003, where Juichi Wakisaka bumped his way past Erik Comas in the final corner and through to the victory, or in 2010, where Koudai Tsukakoshi edged Takashi Kogure over the line by a record margin of just 0.025 seconds to take Real Racing’s first GT500 victory.

Or the famous GT500 “Three-wide pass” in 2007, where Wakisaka, Ryo Michigami, and Daisuke Ito crossed the start/finish line three abreast where only the bravest driver would dare to brake last into Turn 1. Or even just two years ago, where Kohei Hirate and Satoshi Motoyama, in a sudden rain shower, slid and smashed their way through the final sector with Hirate driving on to victory.

Those are just a few of the many great Sugo memories in Super GT history, and the 2019 edition of this race promises to write another incredible chapter in this circuit’s sports car racing history. Especially as the Success Ballast in all categories has been reduced by 50 percent to just 1 kilogram per point scored, putting the outcome more into the hands of the teams, drivers, and mechanics before the ballast is completely gone at Motegi.

When it comes to the battle for the GT500 crown, where do we start?

Lexus has been by far the manufacturer to beat in the premier class. The victory for the #39 Denso Kobelco SARD LC500 (Heikki Kovalainen/Yuichi Nakayama) was their fifth straight victory in 2019. This now puts them one win away from tying the all-time record for consecutive victories by a single manufacturer, the six-race championship round winning streak set by Honda over the 1998 and 1999 seasons. That in itself would be an amazing accomplishment. And Toyota/Lexus has won the Sugo 300km eleven times, including a record six in a row, from 2001 to 2006.

But most important to Toyota Gazoo Racing in 2019 is winning the championship in the premier class, and they have four of their six cars locking out the top four places in the GT500 championship with just two races left this season. Though, at this stage, two main contenders have broken away from the pack: The #6 Wako’s 4CR LC500 of Kazuya Oshima and Kenta Yamashita, and the #37 KeePer TOM’s LC500 of Ryo Hirakawa and Nick Cassidy, separated by just 10 points – while the gap from second to third is 16 and a half points.

Team principal Juichi Wakisaka, the same man who played a key role in some of Super GT’s greatest moments in Sugo as a driver, won his first of three GT500 Drivers’ Championships in 2002 with Team LeMans – and in his fourth season on the pitbox, he has this team within striking distance of their first championship in seventeen years.

Oshima already knows the thrill of winning at Sugo, as his victory in 2012 for Team LeMans ended the team’s nine-year winless drought dating back to that memorable 2003 race, as he shed tears of joy after the race. Himself and Kenta Yamashita, the new top star of the future for Toyota Gazoo Racing on the international stage, are each looking for their first GT500 titles after catapulting to the top of the table following back-to-back victories in Buriram and the Fuji 500 Miles.

There is a championship-clinching scenario in place for Oshima and Yamashita: If the #6 Wako’s LC500 finishes on the podium and the #37 KeePer LC500 of Hirakawa and Cassidy fails to score points, that will decide the championship with one round to go, something that’s only happened twice before in GT500, most recently in 2012.

But consistency has been the key for keeping the 2017 GT500 Champions at Lexus Team KeePer TOM’s in the hunt for their second championship in three seasons. Hirakawa and Cassidy are on a roll of four straight top-four finishes this season, with podium finishes at Suzuka, Buriram, and most recently Autopolis, where Hirakawa reminded us of his class when he charged from 7th to 3rd on the final lap on a drying track.

In fact, in 22 races together since joining up in 2017, Hirakawa and Cassidy have scored 11 podium finishes, and only twice have they ever failed to score points. If they can keep that form going with another solid points finish, they’d go into Motegi knowing a win in the last race could make the 25-year-olds champions again.

It may be hard to envision either the number 6 or 37 Lexus winning to keep the manufacturer winning streak alive, though, given that both are on 65 and 55 kilos of success ballast, applied as both a weight handicap and a “Stage 1” fuel-flow limiter. But anything can happen at Sugo, as time and history have proven!

If not them, the #39 Denso LC500 of Kovalainen & Nakayama may be a threat to win back-to-back races, or it could be the #38 ZENT Cerumo LC500 (Yuji Tachikawa/Hiroaki Ishiura), winners of the Fuji 500km in May. They’re 3rd and 4th in the standings respectively. They’d need to win to keep their title aspirations going into Motegi. While the #36 au TOM’s LC500 (Kazuki Nakajima/Yuhi Sekiguchi) just needs to win the next two races to even have a chance at the title. Of course, they aren’t the only team in a desperate need of a victory this Sunday at Sugo.

As Lexus looks to equal a historic winning streak, Nissan looks to prevent their first winless season since 2002. It’s been 13 races since the 2018 Fuji 500km, the last Nissan victory in GT500. The speed has been there, especially for the #23 Motul Autech NISMO GT-R of Tsugio Matsuda and Ronnie Quintarelli, but they’ve yet to convert any of their three pole positions so far this season into victories.

Sitting 5th in the standings and 26.5 points outside of first place, with 39 kilos of Success Ballast on board, this is a must-win race for Matsuda and Quintarelli – they’d really need at minimum a podium finish to stay in it to Motegi, but realistically, it’s win-or-bust for the Red Car to keep their title hopes alive, for a third title for Matsuda and a record-extending fifth for Quintarelli.

Nissan teams endured a dreadful weekend at Autopolis thanks in no small part to the awkward timing of multiple Safety Car interventions. Their other three cars are now mathematically eliminated from championship contention as a result. Not that they won’t be trying to snatch victory and play spoiler in the title fight, but Nissan have only won here three times in 25 previous races, in 2009, 2011, and 2016.

Keep an eye out on the #24 Realize Corporation Advan GT-R (Mitsunori Takaboshi/Jann Mardenborough), driving for the Kondo Racing team that won it in 2016, and on the #3 CraftSports Motul GT-R, with Frederic Makowiecki and Kohei Hirate – whose last GT500 appearance at Sugo was in that thrilling 2017 race.

James Rossiter should be medically cleared to return to the #12 Calsonic Impul GT-R alongside Daiki Sasaki, with Katsumasa Chiyo not far away on standby just in case the Brit is unable to race.

And what of Honda, who scored a 1-2 finish in last year’s race at Sugo?

It’s not all over yet for the Honda teams, but just as it is for the Motul GT-R and the au TOM’s LC500, if either the #8 ARTA NSX-GT (Tomoki Nojiri/Takuya Izawa), the defending champion #1 Raybrig NSX-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Jenson Button), or the #17 Keihin NSX-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi/Bertrand Baguette) are to have any aspirations of remaining in a title fight, they have to win these next two races.

Recall it was last year that Yamamoto and Button who won the Sugo GT 300km Race from pole position, albeit with it being much more eventful than it probably should have thanks to a wayward circuit vehicle stacking the Raybrig NSX and the ARTA NSX up on the final lap!

Yamamoto and Button will look to repeat as Sugo winners, a track where Team Kunimitsu have won twice in the last four years, while ARTA’s duo of Nojiri and Izawa would like to improve that one more position and take their first win since the rain-shortened race in Okayama.

The Keihin NSX of Real Racing will, of course, look back to that incredible victory in 2010 as inspiration to do it again, after dominating practice and qualifying at Autopolis only to fall short of victory by the end of the day.

While the #64 Modulo Epson NSX-GT (Narain Karthikeyan/Tadasuke Makino) and the #16 Motul Mugen NSX-GT (Hideki Mutoh/Daisuke Nakajima) are each trying to race their way out of the bottom of the GT500 points table.

This will be the penultimate championship race for the mid-engined Honda NSX-GT, of course, before its replacement by a front-engined version for 2020. A difficult decision for Honda to make, and one that has been a point of contention for many of Honda’s supporters. Can Honda weave another tale of midship magic in these final two races?

GT500 has two main contenders in play for the title with many other outsiders needing a lot of help to get back into the fight for Motegi. But in GT300, it’s a much different story and a much closer battle for the top spot! Just six and a half points cover the top four teams in the GT300 Drivers’ Championship, while less than 25 points cover the top fifteen!

Consistent points-scoring has been the key for three of those top four squads, including the championship-leading #55 ARTA Honda NSX GT3 EVO of Shinichi Takagi and Nirei Fukuzumi, who have scored points in all six rounds with five top-six finishes and two podiums, and lead the championship despite not winning in the first six rounds.

Similar consistency has also propelled the #88 ManePa Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO (Yuya Motojima/Takashi Kogure), trailing by just five points in second, and the #56 Realize/Nissan Mechanic Challenge GT-R GT3 (Kazuki Hiramine/Sacha Fenestraz), 6.5 points back in fourth. If either car wins, it could put them into the top of the tables going into Motegi. A third win of the 2019 season could also put the #96 K-Tunes Lexus RC F GT3 (Morio Nitta/Sena Sakaguchi) in the top spot, as they’re just five and a half points back in third place.

Right behind them, a win or podium finish would certainly vault the fifth-place #87 T-Dash Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO (Tsubasa Takahashi/André Couto), the sixth-place #11 Gainer TanaX GT-R GT3 (Katsuyuki Hiranaka/Hironobu Yasuda), or the seventh-place #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Tatsuya Kataoka) towards the front, maybe even at the top of the standings depending on how those ahead of them finish.

And a second victory in a row for the #60 Syntium LM Corsa RC F GT3 (Hiroki Yoshimoto/Ritomo Miyata) certainly would come in handy, with Yoshimoto now eighth in the standings. Don’t count out the #10 Gainer TanaX triple a GT-R (Kazuki Hoshino/Keishi Ishikawa), winners in Buriram, or the defending champion team, the #65 LEON Pyramid AMG (Naoya Gamou/Togo Suganami), with Gamou still in the hunt for back-to-back GT300 titles.

The JAF-GT300 and Mother Chassis vehicles would seem to have an inherent advantage around Sportsland Sugo, technical in the first sector, and flowing through the next two. But the leading cars in this bracket are in a must-win mode for the next two races to keep their title hopes alive. Last year’s winning car, the #61 Subaru BRZ R&D Sport (Takuto Iguchi/Hideki Yamauchi), won in dominant fashion from pole position. They’ll need another victory like that to overcome a season plagued with reliability issues.

Otherwise, the best challenge from this group may come from either the #25 Hoppy Toyota 86 MC (Takamitsu Matsui/Kimiya Sato), a car that’s taken pole position three times this year and won at Sugo in 2015, or the #52 Saitama Toyopet GreenBrave Toyota Mark X MC (Shigekazu Wakisaka/Hiroki Yoshida), who are ranked tenth in the GT300 standings on the strength of two podium finishes.

Strangely enough, no driver that’s run every race is mathematically eliminated from title contention, but there will be a few teams just trying to win the race and play spoiler, chief among them, the #7 D’station Aston Martin Vantage GT3 (Tomonobu Fujii/João Paulo de Oliveira), who’ve been fast most of the year but don’t even have a point to their names to show for it yet!

For the second time this year, Super GT’s new GT300 qualifying format will be used, splitting the field into two groups based on championship ranking in odd and even positions, with the top eight cars from each group in Q1 advancing into Q2. And that bonus point for pole position will be hotly contested in such a close championship fight!

The 26th Sugo GT 300km Race goes green this Sunday at 14:00 JST (local time), 6:00 AM in the UK & Ireland, 7:00 AM throughout continental Europe, and 1:00 AM on the east coast of the US & Canada.

Images courtesy of Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, JAF Motor Sports, and the GT Association