Every year, Super GT World honours the most outstanding performers in the Autobacs Super GT Series with the Super GT World Awards.

The GT500 class is the pinnacle of GT racing in terms of speed and spectacle. Over thirty drivers took part this year, but only one will be recognized as the Driver of the Year, honouring the most outstanding individual driver in the GT500 category.

It is an ultra competitive field in which there are no weak links, in which every driver has earned their place on the grid by their merit. Before announcing the seven finalists including the one winner, some honourable mentions…

In amongst the dominance of the Lexus brigade, the aggressive early-race performances of James Rossiter, and the speed of Heikki Kovalainen, went a bit under the radar in 2017 – particularly as Kovalainen and Lexus Team SARD fell out of title contention before the final round.

Jann Mardenborough met all expectations on his GT500 debut, even being a featured athlete on SportsCenter in the United States.

Honda returned to form and that was in no small part due to the performances of the likes of Koudai Tsukakoshi and Bertrand Baguette, the two quick protagonists of the Suzuka 1000km.

Many were considered, until we made it to a short list of seven – here are the finalists.

TOMOKI NOJIRI [野尻 智紀]

nominated by R.J.

GT500 Drivers’ Championship: 9th (37 points)

Race Wins: 1 (Fuji 300km)

Top 10 Finishes: 5

Pole Positions: 2 (Sugo, Fuji 300km)

Top 10 Fastest Race Laps Average: Sugo, Fuji 300km

Autobacs Racing Team Aguri’s GT500 resurgence in 2017 wouldn’t have been possible without the talents of their lead driver, Tomoki Nojiri.

The year did not start off ideally, of course, with their breakdown and subsequent DNS at Okayama, then an early crash out at Autopolis. It looked to be the start of another subpar year, like many of the ones of recent memory, for ARTA in GT500.

But starting with the Sugo leg of the traditional Summer Series, Nojiri started to find his master stroke with a brilliant pole position. Unfortunately, when Nojiri spun off on a wet track from the lead of the race, it sealed their fate, and the ARTA NSX would not take the win.

The Fuji 300km was a much different story: From his second pole position – the only driver to take multiple poles in a season – he drove away from the field, leaving Takashi Kobayashi to hold on to the first part of ARTA’s double victory at the mountain.

In both those races, Nojiri posted the fastest 10 race laps average, and perhaps there is bigger and better things to come from ARTA’s #1 man.

HIROAKI ISHIURA [石浦 宏明]

nominated by R.J.

2017 GT500 Drivers’ Championship: 4th Place (62 points)

Race Wins: 1 (Fuji 500km)

Podiums: 3 (Fuji 500km, Fuji 300km, Motegi)

Top 5 Finishes: 5

2017 Japanese Super Formula Champion

While he may not have the world championship-level clout of a Kazuki Nakajima or a Heikki Kovalainen, Hiroaki Ishiura might very well be one of Toyota’s best drivers at the domestic level.

He reinforced that through his consistency at the Super GT level, alongside Yuji Tachikawa and Lexus Team ZENT Cerumo – where only once, in a race where the start-of-race tyre selection backfired heavily at Sugo, did he as a driver ever finish outside the championship points in either of his two championships.

The Fuji 500km was a race noteworthy for Tachikawa taking his eighth victory at the speedway, but Ishiura also took his third win in that event in the process, thanks to his solid middle stint – fastest of the drivers who drove that middle stanza of the race.

He added more fireworks as he tried to take second away from Tsugio Matsuda with all of his efforts, again at Fuji Speedway, this time at the 300km race. Between those two GT races at Fuji, there was a Super Formula win that effectively gave him the championship.

A third podium at the end of the season at Motegi, preceded by a marvelous job to salvage points from what could have been utter disaster in Thailand, only reinforced how well Ishiura performed on both fronts.

He was the only driver to score points in a shortened Super Formula season, and while there was some disappointment that Pierre Gasly or Felix Rosenqvist couldn’t take the title off of him, it’s a reflection on Ishiura that he could still hang with some of the best prospects in global motorsport – as he continues to get better at a time where most drivers would start to fall off.

NAOKI YAMAMOTO [山本 尚貴]

nominated by R.J.

GT500 Drivers’ Championship: 7th Place (45 points)

Podiums: 2 (Autopolis, Suzuka)

Pole Positions: 1 (Autopolis)

Top 10 Finishes: 7

Fastest 10 Race Laps Average: Autopolis

Naoki Yamamoto is a modern marvel of consistency throughout all the ups and downs that Honda have been through in GT500 over the span of the last eight seasons since his debut – and his and Team Kunimitsu’s season probably deserved a trip to the top step of the podium for their efforts.

At the third round at Autopolis, Yamamoto did pretty much everything he could have to give the Raybrig NSX the win, including pole position and a blistering opening stint to the race. But a combination of a poorly timed safety car and a slow pit stop took them out of the fight for the win, and 3rd place was only a consolation.

Yamamoto started on the front row again at Sugo, and again he was authoritative at the front of the field on a wet track – but again their race was compromised by the timing of the Safety Cars.

The Suzuka 1000km represented Yamamoto’s finest drive, where in his final stint, he drove from 9th to 3rd and took the final podium place after a grueling battle with Kohei Hirate that won him the Super GT+ Award for the best on-track action as seen by the TV Tokyo magazine show.

With 7 top-10 finishes, he continues his remarkable run of consistency as he’s now scored points in 51 of his 63 career Super GT races, all at the GT500 level, through 8 seasons.

Naoki Yamamoto led Team Kunimitsu and their Raybrig NSX to be the best of the Honda fleet in the 2017 GT500 championship, and with 2018 on the horizon, they’re once again looking towards an elusive championship title.

NICK CASSIDY [ニック・キャシディ]

nominated by Geinou

Youngest-ever GT500 Drivers’ Champion

Wins: 2 (Okayama, Buriram)

Podiums: 4 (Okayama, Fuji 500km, Buriram, Motegi)

It wouldn’t be right to leave either half of the GT500 Championship winning team off the list of nominations, and to his credit, Nick Cassidy improved by leaps and bounds in the 2017 season.

At Okayama, he held off a daunting charge from Kazuya Oshima to give the KeePer TOM’s LC500 a chance at another season-opening victory – the first of Cassidy’s career, the first Kiwi to win a race in Super GT. It’s likely that it won’t be his last, either.

Per race engineer Tsutomu Tojo, who worked with Cassidy in 2016, his best improvements came with regards to traffic management. Where he would lose time as a rookie in 2016, he would successfully find his way through the GT300 field.

In the middle stages of the season, it was all about keeping the title aspirations alive to the end of the season to prevent a repeat of recent letdowns – and with clean, smart, and calculated racing, Cassidy did just that – especially as he navigated the wet/dry start at Buriram, and finally, getting past Andrea Caldarelli’s stricken Wako’s LC500 to clinch the title at Motegi.

Cassidy thus became the youngest-ever GT500 champion in history, in just his second year of GT racing.

In the midst of a generation of “lost talents” from New Zealand – young drivers like Mitch Evans and Richie Stanaway who might have made it to Formula 1 were it not for a lack of backing and connections – Nick Cassidy, who found a new way to forge his legacy in Japan, might be the finest of them all, and even if he doesn’t take the Brendon Hartley road less traveled to Formula 1, he’s still going to be a success anywhere he competes.

3RD: RONNIE QUINTARELLI [ロニー・クインタレッリ]

nominated by Geinou

GT500 Drivers’ Championship: 2nd Place (82 points)

Race Wins: 1 (Motegi)

Podiums: 3 (Fuji 300km, Suzuka, Motegi)

Top 5 Finishes: 6

Pole Positions: 1 (Motegi)

Fastest 10 Race Laps Average: Motegi

Between the top three, this was another incredibly close and difficult selection – one that sees Ronnie Quintarelli only third on our overall ballot.

That’s no shame at all for “Ronnie Quattro.” Far from it actually. for the four-time champion was one of Super GT’s star performers all throughout 2017 despite not having the best equipment underneath him – which is amazing to think given his final result in the standings.

But indeed, Nissan started the 2017 season down on power, which really showed as Quintarelli tried with all his might to fend off a hard-charging field at the Fuji 500km, the first of six times that the Motul GT-R would finish in the top five during the season.

Once the second half of the season got going, Quintarelli and NISMO would really hit their stride. It began with their first podium at the Fuji 300km, followed by a race that Quintarelli described as one of his best races he’s ever had. Coming from as low as P12 after a drive-through penalty, he recovered to finish 2nd and briefly took the championship lead.

Then came the Motegi race, and the hat trick of pole position (in record fashion), fastest lap, and a race win that so nearly won Quintarelli his fifth GT500 title in just seven years.

In that win, Quintarelli became Super GT’s winningest foreign driver, surpassing Firman and Tréluyer. Unlike the other two, Quintarelli may not get to drive a Formula 1 Grand Prix, and he’s not likely to get a chance to win Le Mans any time soon – but it shouldn’t damage his status as Italy’s number one racing driver on the planet today.

2ND: TSUGIO MATSUDA [松田 次生]

nominated by Alex Sinclair

GT500 Drivers’ Championship: 2nd Place (82 points)

Race Wins: 1 (Motegi)

Podiums: 3 (Fuji 300km, Suzuka, Motegi)

Top 5 Finishes: 6

Winningest GT500 Driver of All Time (19 career wins)

Tsugio Matsuda may not have the out-and-out, balls-to-the-wall speed that his co-driver Quintarelli does. But he doesn’t have to have that to be considered one of the greatest GT500 drivers today, and potentially, the greatest of all time – as in some respect, he is already the most successful.

Like Quintarelli, Matsuda had to work through a difficult spot as Nissan struggled to get the power into their updated 2017 GT-R, and when the team needed good finishes throughout the season, he got them, as he finished within a second of the podium at Autopolis, and then on a drying track, worked them up from a paltry 14th on the grid to finish 4th, within 0.3 seconds of a podium.

By the time the series came back to Fuji for the 300km in August, the GT-R had an updated powerplant, but Hiroaki Ishiura was determined to take second place from Matsuda – but the two-time GT500 champion put on one of the most sterling defensive drives of the season, and did it fairly, to hold on to second place.

Matsuda then put in another masterful 89 laps over three stints in the Suzuka 1000km, carrying 82 kilograms of added weight around the fast and flowing Suzuka Circuit, he did his part to recover from as low as 12th place, and if anything were to happen to the Epson NSX, Matsuda gave his team a chance to steal the win.

He did take the chequered flag for NISMO to prevent a winless season at Motegi, in a race where they could have won the GT500 championship if the KeePer TOM’s LC500 fell apart in the Grand Final.

Situationally, Matsuda came through in the clutch when his team needed it, and while it didn’t quite get NISMO to the point of winning their 9th GT500 title as an organisation and Matsuda’s third as an individual, it did prove why Matsuda makes a case for being the best of his generation.

And the winner is…

1ST: RYO HIRAKAWA [平川 亮]

nominated by Geinou

GT500 Drivers’ Champion (84 points)

Wins: 2 (Okayama, Buriram)

Podiums: 4 (Okayama, Fuji 500km, Buriram, Motegi)

Pole Positions: 1 (Buriram)

Fastest Top 10 Race Laps Average: Okayama

2017 European Le Mans Series – LMP2 Championship Winning Team Member

Five years ago, Japanese motorsport fans began to get caught up in the fever of the year of the 18-year old phenom that was immediately being compared to the great seven-time World Champion Michael Schumacher.

Ryo Hirakawa has always had the potential to be a champion, and sure enough, that dream was realized in just his third season in Super GT.

Hirakawa seems to have an affinity for the season-opening round at the Okayama International Circuit, where he started on the front row, for the third time in as many years, then won the race and set the fastest top 10 race laps’ average for the afternoon at the opening round.

That and a second-place finish at the Fuji 500km were enough to give the team a strong start to the season, but the question was always going to be whether or not the 37 crew would have the staying power to stay at the front of the title fight, or if they would fade away. There were some less than optimal races during the season that tested their resolve.

But Hirakawa led the team to valuable points-paying finishes in the middle four rounds, and as the ballast came off the KeePer LC500, Hirakawa began to find his outright speed again – reinforced by a cracking pole lap at the Chang International Circuit, which eventually, he converted into another victory.

At Motegi, second place was good enough to seal the championship, and he didn’t put a wheel wrong all year long. Whereas in his rookie year, Hirakawa was all about going for the gusto with his dramatic late-race heroics, this year, he was all about measured consistency.

Perhaps it’s part of what he’s gleamed in Europe, where Hirakawa won the 4 Hours of Monza in Italy, finished a close second in a race that just got away from him at Silverstone, and helped G-Drive Racing by DragonSpeed take the LMP2 title in the European Le Mans Series. Again, he was solid at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, but early mechanical gremlins denied him any chance at a meaningful result for his team.

And what’s incredible still is that Hirakawa doesn’t even turn 24 until this March, and he’s motivated to accomplish even bigger and better things in his career. Does that mean ending the Toyota curse at Le Mans? Does that mean a Formula 1 promotion that should be his on merit? In any case, Hirakawa demonstrated that he was the class of the field in the 2017 Autobacs Super GT Series – and will be a major force for years to come.