Honda has set the pace with the No. 8 ARTA NSX-GT driven by Tomoki Nojiri and Takuya Izawa, beating the course record by more than 2 sec to take pole for today’s third round of the Autobacs Super GT Championship at the famous Suzuka circuit.
Izawa stunned the field with a time of 1’44.319 to take pole from the No. 64 Epson Modulo NSX-GT (Bertrand Baguette) and former F1 world champion Jenson Button in the No. 100 RAYBRIG NSX-GT.
Fourth place went to another NSX-GT, the No. 16 MOTUL MUGEN NSX-GT (Hideki Mutoh), giving the Honda cars a sweep of the top four fastest times.
The fastest among the LEXUS LC500 teams was the No. 1 KeePer TOM’S LC500 (Ryo Hirakawa), while the fastest NISSAN GT-R NISMO GT500 team was the 5th position No. 12 CALSONIC IMPUL GT-R (Daiki Sasaki).
In the GT300 class, the No. 96 K-tunes RC F GT3 driven by Morio Niita and Yuichi Nakayama won the class pole, also with a course record to give the Lexus RC F GT3 its first ever pole position.
For Yuichi Nakayama, it was his second pole position. Finishing Q2 in 3rd position was last years champion team, the No. 0 GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG (Tatsuya Kataoka).
Live coverage of the race kicks off Sunday afternoon at 15:30 AEST thanks to NISMO TV.