With less than two weeks until the penultimate round of the 2018 Autobacs Super GT Series at Autopolis circuit on 21 October, 40 teams gathered for the final official test of the season at Twin Ring Motegi, which began with a pair of two-hour sessions on Monday.

Nissan GT-Rs took three of the top four positions in the morning session that ran from 10:00 to 12:00 JST, led by the #12 Calsonic Impul GT-R (Daiki Sasaki/Jann Mardenborough), with Sasaki setting a best lap time of 1’37.280 to pace the first session. Second-fastest was the #23 Motul Autech GT-R (Tsugio Matsuda/Ronnie Quintarelli), and fourth-fastest was the #24 Forum Engineering Advan GT-R (João Paulo de Oliveira/Mitsunori Takaboshi.

They were joined by the defending series champions #1 KeePer TOM’s LC500 (Ryo Hirakawa/Nick Cassidy) in third place, with the session interrupted twice for red flags where the GT300 class #777 CarGuy ADA NSX GT3 (Naoki Yokomizo/Takeshi Kimura) and the #52 Saitama Toyopet GreenBrave Toyota Mark X MC (Taku Bamba/Shigekazu Wakisaka) crashed in the final sector.

An extended afternoon session began in earnest at 14:20 JST, after 20 minutes of Safety Car protocol practice. Just as in official practice sessions, the final 10 minutes were reserved for GT500-only running.

In that final session, Kenta Yamashita, aboard the #19 WedsSport Advan LC500 (with Yuji Kunimoto), recorded the fastest time of 1’37.241, just under a second off the GT500 lap record set during qualifying for last year’s Motegi GT 250km Grand Final. Second-fastest was the #36 au TOM’s LC500 (Kazuki Nakajima/Yuhi Sekiguchi), with Sekiguchi recording a 1’37.467 right at the end of the session – two-tenths shy of his Lexus stablemate.

The #38 ZENT Cerumo LC500 (Yuji Tachikawa/Hiroaki Ishiura) completed a Lexus 1-2-3 at the top, three-tenths ahead of the #24 Forum Engineering GT-R of Oliveira & Takaboshi in 4th.

The championship-leading #100 Raybrig Honda NSX-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Jenson Button) was eighth-fastest in the morning session, and thirteenth-fastest in the afternoon session, ranking 11th overall out of the 15 GT500 runners – it is possible that Team Kunimitsu were doing race simulations with ballast aboard, but this cannot be confirmed.

In GT300, the best time of the day belonged to the #9 Gulf NAC Porsche 911 GT3-R (Rintaro Kubo/Keishi Ishikawa). Ishikawa posted a fastest lap of 1’47.140 in the afternoon session. The other Porsche, the #7 D’station Porsche 911 GT3-R of Tomonobu Fujii, was just two-tenths down on Ishikawa in the same session.

In the morning session, the #88 ManePa Lamborghini Huracán GT3 (Kazuki Hiramine/Marco Mapelli) was fastest with a 1’47.263, good enough for 2nd overall in the category.

This test session also saw the first Super GT running for a young emerging star of the future: 19-year-old Kazuto Kotaka, a Toyota-affiliated young driver who currently competes in the FIA F4 Japanese Championship for FTRS TOM’s Spirit.

Kotaka drove 8 laps in the #25 Hoppy Toyota 86 MC (with Takamitsu Matsui/Sho Tsuboi), and is expected to get more running in tomorrow’s two test sessions – and undoubtedly, Kotaka will be in consideration for a full-time Super GT drive next year as he continues to step up the ladder.

TEST DAY 1 RESULTS >>>

Images courtesy of the GT Association (GTA)