The teams and drivers of the Autobacs Super GT Series gathered for the second day of their first official pre-season test from Okayama International Circuit on Sunday.

Once again, the weather would disrupt the standard operating procedures in Session 3, which began at 9:00 AM JST (local time) with temperatures as low as 4°C Air, and 7°C Track. Session 3 thus became a chance for the teams, and in particular, the tyre manufacturers, to show their pace in wet conditions.

In the cold, wet conditions, the Michelin-clad Nissan GT-Rs of NISMO and NDDP Racing with B-Max stood out as the class of the field. As the track began to improve during the second hour of Session 3, Tsugio Matsuda was continuously putting in fast lap after fast lap aboard his and Ronnie Quintarelli’s #23 Motul Autech GT-R. In the final minutes of the session, it looked as if Matsuda’s best lap of 1’26.671 would hold up.

But right at the last seconds, Kohei Hirate took the top spot in the #3 CraftSports Motul GT-R, by a tenth of a second with a 1’26.556. Hirate logged a total of 185 laps over two days, as his new co-driver, Frédéric Makowiecki, was off winning from pole position in the GTLM class at the 12 Hours of Sebring for Porsche.

At the end of Session 3, there were 15 minutes of Safety Car training, and before the start of the afternoon’s Session 4, there was a practice start for both GT500 and GT300 classes.

The weird weather wasn’t quite over as a flash shower of hail pelted the track just after Session 4 went green at 2:00 PM JST, but as soon as the skies suddenly opened, the hail was gone, and it didn’t disrupt the teams’ push for improvement in the final session at Okayama.

45 minutes into the session, the #6 Wako’s 4CR LC500 of Kazuya Oshima & Kenta Yamashita became the first car to crack the 1 minute 20 barrier on Sunday. And on his final flying lap, it was 23-year-old Yamashita, newly acquired by Lexus Team Wako’s LeMans in the offseason, who put in the fastest lap of the session with a 1’17.849, coming within seven-tenths of the benchmark from Saturday set by Daiki Sasaki in the #12 Calsonic Impul GT-R.

Lexus swept the top three places, with the #39 Denso Kobelco SARD LC500 (Heikki Kovalainen/Yuichi Nakayama) finishing in second on the overall running order for Sunday, and the #38 ZENT Cerumo LC500 (Yuji Tachikawa/Hiroaki Ishiura) finishing in third.

Despite the session-leading times, Yamashita admitted that he still needs more long-run experience on Bridgestone tyres, and both he and Saturday pace-setter Sasaki believed that the manufacturers hadn’t shown their true pace just yet.

The best of the Honda runners was the #8 ARTA NSX-GT (Tomoki Nojiri/Takuya Izawa) in fourth place, and the best of the Nissan runners was the #24 Realize Corporation Advan GT-R (Mitsunori Takaboshi/Jann Mardenborough) in sixth place.

Defending series champions Naoki Yamamoto & Jenson Button finished eighth overall on Sunday in their #1 Raybrig NSX-GT, while the #17 Keihin NSX-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi/Bertrand Baguette) lost their entire afternoon session due to a drivetrain issue.

The #96 K-Tunes Lexus RC F GT3 of Morio Nitta and rookie Sena Sakaguchi were the class of the field in GT300 on Sunday afternoon. 52-year-old Nitta showed that he isn’t losing any of the pace that made him a three-time series champion, as he threatened the official class lap record with his best lap of 1’25.455 during Session 4.

Nitta lamented that the K-Tunes Racing team weren’t able to implement their planned testing programme due to the weather, but remained confident as he hopes to take the team, owned by Okayama Toyopet, to the podium at Okayama during the season opener on 14 April.

The #25 Hoppy Toyota 86 MC (Takamitsu Matsui/Kimiya Sato/Takeshi Tsuchiya) finished second in Session 4, ahead of the #61 Subaru BRZ R&D Sport (Takuto Iguchi/Hideki Yamauchi) in third, then the #34 Modulo Kenwood Honda NSX GT3 Evo (Ryo Michigami/Hiroki Otsu) in fourth, and the #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Tatsuya Kataoka) in fifth.

Setting the pace for the newcomers to the GT300 field was, once again, the #7 D’station Aston Martin Vantage GT3 (Tomonobu Fujii/João Paulo de Oliveira) in sixth place. The two newest Nissan Customer Racing teams also made a good showing in the afternoon session, with the #33 EVA Racing X Works GT-R (Marchy Lee/Shawn Thong) finishing ninth overall, and the #56 Realize/Nissan Mechanic Challenge GT-R GT3 (Kazuki Hiramine/Sacha Fenestraz) in tenth.

Backtracking to the wet Session 3, defending GT300 champions LEON Racing led the way with Haruki Kurosawa in the #65 LEON Pyramid AMG going quickest, ahead of the #4 Miku AMG and the #34 Modulo NSX GT3.

The other new GT3 machine on the grid, the #720 McLaren 720S GT3 (Seiji Ara/Álex Palou) excelled in the wet conditions going fourth overall. There was also intrigue as Takashi Kogure made his GT300 testing debut in the #88 JLOC Lamborghini Huracán GT3. Kogure was as high as second overall in Session 3, and co-driver Yuya Motojima set the car’s quickest time which was still good enough for fifth in the session.

Many of the drivers in the field will keep busy over the next fortnight before the series reconvenes on 30 & 31 March at Fuji International Speedway for the second and final official pre-season test session.

DAY 2 COMBINED RESULTS >>>

Images courtesy of D’station Racing and the GT Association (GTA)