This past Wednesday and Thursday at Suzuka Circuit, eleven Japanese-based teams traveled to Suzuka Circuit for a two-day tyre test in preparation for this August’s Suzuka 10 Hours.

The iconic figure-of-eight Formula 1 circuit hosts Asia’s Intercontinental GT Challenge round for the first time on August 24-26 and kicked off its preparations for the 47th Summer Endurance Race by staging a free test.

Goodsmile Racing with Team UKYO, the reigning GT300 champions, were joined by fellow Super GT teams Cars Tokai Dream28 (Mooncraft/Lotus), Team UPGarage (Toyota/Dome), Gainer (Nissan), D’station Racing (Porsche), CarGuy Racing (Honda), Team JLOC (Lamborghini) and Audi Team Hitotsuyama. Also running the test were reigning Super Taikyu ST-X champions ARN Racing (Ferrari), now of the Blancpain GT Asia Series, and also from Super Taikyu, Rn-sports (Mercedes-AMG).

The top priority for several teams was a chance to sample Pirelli’s P Zero DHD2 tyre compound, which was introduced at the start of 2018. With persistent rain preventing any dry running on Wednesday, that opportunity first arrived during the second day of testing on Thursday.

D’station Racing’s Porsche driven by Tomonobu Fujii topped both the morning and afternoon sessions on Thursday, while his best of 2:01.146s was 0.095s faster than Goodsmile Racing & Team UKYO’s Tatsuya Kataoka, whose Mercedes-AMG ended the day second overall.

These times on spec Pirelli tyres were, in the case of the Hatsune Miku AMG of Goodsmile Racing, over a second slower than the fastest race laps set last weekend in the Super GT Suzuka 300km – where there is an open tyre selection.

The Audi Team Hitotsuyama R8 LMS GT3, which paced Wednesday’s wet running, also set the third fastest dry time thanks to Richard Lyons. Joining Hitotsuyama for the test was reigning Intercontinental GT Challenge champion Markus Winkelhock who helped Audi’s Japanese customer team transition to Pirelli’s new tyre.

“Trying to learn a new circuit as technical as Suzuka in the wet isn’t ideal, but we were still P1 in both of yesterday’s sessions and today was also good in the dry,” said the German, whose exact programme for the Suzuka 10 Hours remains unconfirmed. “This week has been about helping the team understand the new tyre, which we’ve been using in Europe since the start of the year, so they have some data to work with before the 10 Hours. Suzuka is a tough circuit that puts a lot of load through the tyres but I was surprised how well they stood up over a long run.”

This was Winkelhock’s first visit to Japan, let alone Suzuka, and the experience has left him eager to return.

“The team are great to work with – everything’s very organised, almost to Formula 1’s level in some ways, and there’s no issues with communication either. The Japanese teams will be very strong on home soil in August,” he added. “But I was also amazed at the number of fans at Suzuka for the test. It’s clear they love motor racing – their support is incredible.”

In advance of the test, some more teams announced their driver lineups for the Suzuka summer endurance classic to come.

Gainer, the 2015 GT300 class winners of the Suzuka 1000km, announced their lineup for the Suzuka 10 Hours: 2006 Suzuka 1000km winner and second-generation driver Kazuki Hoshino, who drives Gainer’s #10 GT-R in Super GT, will join Katsuyuki Hiranaka and Hironobu Yasuda, from the #11 Gainer GT-R team.

Meanwhile, Team UPGarage, the only team (as of yet) to field a Toyota-badged car in the form of their Dome Racing-built Toyota 86 MC, announced that two-time GT300 class winner Takuto Iguchi of Subaru will join regular Team UPGarage drivers Yuhki Nakayama and 2010 Suzuka 1000km winner Takashi Kobayashi. They won their first Super GT race in April at Okayama International Circuit.

With Craft-Bamboo Racing being the latest team to confirm their Suzuka 10 Hours entry, 31 teams have entered the revamped 47th running of Suzuka’s summer sports car endurance race – with more drivers and, perhaps, a few more teams set to confirm their participation as August draws closer.

Images courtesy of SRO Motorsports Groupv