Super GT 2018 season preview: All you need to know
Jenson Button might be the biggest draw in the 2018 Super GT season, but there are plenty of other convincing reasons to follow Japan’s biggest racing championship this year, as Rachit Thukral explains.
Photo by: Tomohiro Yoshita
Races
The Super GT calendar has undergone several changes, most notably the departure of its flagship race, the Suzuka 1000km. While a 10-hour endurance race for GT3/GT300 cars has since been announced as its spiritual successor, it will be a part of the Intercontinental GT Challenge, joining the likes of the Bathurst 12 Hours and the Spa 24 Hours.
Instead, a new 500-mile race at Fuji will take Suzuka 1000km’s place on the calendar, with the F1 venue also staying on in the form of a shorter 300km round.
The new season will kick off this weekend at the Okayama International Circuit, venue of the Pacific Formula 1 Grand Prix in 1994-95, with the championship concluding at Motegi on November 11.
Regulation changes
After a major technical overhaul in 2017, the Super GT regulations remain largely stable in 2018.
Among changes on the sporting side, the formation lap procedure has been tweaked to avoid a repeat of last year’s Motegi finale, where a Lexus and a Nissan made brief, but significant contact at the last chicane.
Fuel flow restrictions under the Balance of Performance (BoP) regime have been reduced to a small extent, providing less of a handicap to successful teams.
And finally, the time duration for Q2 has been reduced from 12 to 10 minutes for GT500 cars to ensure more action in the final part of qualifying session.
Six-car assault by Lexus
Lexus will field six cars in 2018, the highest among series’ three GT500 manufacturers.
Out of the sextet, Nick Cassidy and Ryo Hirakawa will form one of the two unchanged line-ups, the defending champions continuing with TOM’S in the renamed #1 car.
Formula E star Felix Rosenqvist and Kamui Kobayashi will be the star additions to the Lexus brigade, the two joining Team LeMans and Sard respectively.
Rosenqvist will partner his previous Super Formula teammate Kazuya Oshima, while Kobayashi will pair up with fellow former F1 driver Heikki Kovalainen.
Among other changes, Kazuki Nakajima will have a new teammate in the #37 TOM’S entry following James Rossiter’s move to Super Formula. Nakajima will team up with Yuhi Sekiguchi, who moves over from Lexus Team Bandoh. Sekiguchi’s place, in turn, will be taken over by GT300 graduate and ex-F3 star Kenta Yamashita.
Defending Super Formula champion Hiroaki Ishiura and three-time Super GT title winner Yuji Tachikawa will embark on their fourth season together in the Zent/Cerumo team.
Quintarelli and Matsuda lead Nissan's line-up
Ronnie Quintarelli and Tsugio Matsuda will lead Nissan’s four-car assault in Super GT, continuing their ultra-successful pairing at the factory NISMO squad for a fourth consecutive season. The duo won back-to-back titles in 2014 and ‘15 and came within three points of the drivers’ crown last year.
Triple Super GT champion Satoshi Motoyama and 2015 Blancpain Pro Cup winner Katsumasa Chiyo will also stay as teammates in 2017, but will race for B-Max Racing, which steps up from the GT300 category and replaces MOLA in Nissan’s roster of teams.
Elsewhere, Daiki Sasaki will move over from from Kondo Racing to join Nissan GT Academy winner Jann Mardenborough at Impul, with the 26-year-old replaced by All-Japan F3 champion Mitsunori Takaboshi.
Takaboshi will be partnered at Kondo by 2015 runner-up Joao Paulo de Oliveira, who will stay in Super GT for a 13th consecutive season.
Stability at Honda
Honda’s driver line-up will remain largely the same in 2018, with the only changes coming at ARTA and Team Kunimitsu.
Takuya Izawa will leave Team Kunimitsu and return to ARTA after eight years, joining Tomoki Nojiri at the Bridgestone-shod outfit.
As part of the reshuffle, Takashi Kobayashi has been dropped from Honda’s Super GT roster, despite picking up a win alongside Nojiri at Fuji last year.
Real Racing, Nakajima Racing and Mugen, which gave Button his Super GT debut last year, will all carry an unchanged line-up in 2018.
How will Button do?
Button’s Suzuka 1000km outing may have not gone according to plan, but there’s little to suggest that he won’t be racing at the sharp end of the field in his first full Super GT season.
For starters, he will leave Mugen - a team which returned to Super GT after a long gap last year - to drive for Team Kunimitsu, an A-grade Honda squad run by multiple 250cc motorcycle race winner and one-time F1 Grand Prix starter Kunimitsu Takahashi.
More importantly, he is now well versed with heavier but high downforce GT500 cars after an extensive winter testing schedule, which included track running at Malaysia’s Sepang International Circuit.
The F1 2009 champion will also have an accomplished teammate in 2013 Super Formula champion and multiple Super GT race winner Naoki Yamamoto, who has enough experience to guide the squad forward.
GT500 set for close fight
Lexus dominated the first part of 2017 Super GT season, but if testing was a reliable indicator, expect a much closer fight this time around.
Cassidy suggested that Lexus may have in fact slipped behind Honda and Nissan over the winter, but also admitted that all three manufacturers were holding back pace in testing.
Honda was off the pace during the Fuji test, but many suggested that the manufacturer was simply running with a weight ballast.
Nissan, likewise, struggled on the final day of Okayama test, but Matsuda later revealed that his team simply didn’t choose to set a quick lap because the tyres didn’t match the track conditions.
Tyres, of course, will play a major role as Super GT is one of the few remaining series that continues to allow tyre competition. In all, four different manufacturers supply the GT500 field (Bridgestone, Michelin, Yokohama and Dunlop), with Bridgestone having the most number of clients.
29 car-strong GT300 field
This year’s GT300 grid will comprise 29 cars. Of those, 21 are built to FIA GT3 standards, five use Super GT's 'mother chassis' rules (using a standardised chassis) and three conform to the JAF's GT300 rules.
In all, 12 manufacturers will be represented on the GT300 grid, with the latest addition being Honda. The Japanese manufacturer will be debuting its first GT3 car, the NSX GT3, at Okayama this weekend, and plans to sell it to customer teams in other championships as well.
Nissan is also bringing out the second generation GT-R GT3, two of which will be run by Kyoto-based Gainer team.
Sometime Tyrrell and Minardi F1 driver Ukyo Katayama’s eponymous team will continue its long-standing relationship with Mercedes after winning last year’s GT300 title with Nobuteru Taniguchi and Tatsuya Kataoka.
How to follow
All eight Super GT races will be live streamed on NISMO TV’s YouTube channel with English commentary, while Button’s own YouTube handle will feature extended highlights.
Motorsport.com will remain the prime source of written Super GT news, with extensive qualifying and race reports, analysis and interviews planned for the entirety of the season.
Additional reporting by Tomohiro Yoshita
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