Opinion: Why shorter SUPER GT ‘enduros’ could be better

Inevitably, some people will be disappointed by SUPER GT’s decision to hold three 450km races alongside five regular 300km events this season.

GTA boss Masaaki Bandoh had raised hopes that the Suzuka 1000km race might be revived for this year, or that it could be replaced by a new timed event that would end up being of similar length to the old mid-summer endurance classic.

Even though neither of those things ultimately came to fruition, the 2022 calendar still represents a significant increase in race mileage, with 2850km of racing set to take place instead of the 2600km of last year.

Equally, three longer races is an improvement on the two that we had prior to the coronavirus pandemic, and there’s plenty to suggest that the chosen length of 450km will actually be an improvement on the 500km over which Fuji’s Golden Week fixture is traditionally held.

That might seem like an odd suggestion, but it basically boils down to the fact that, counter-intuitively, a 450km race offers more strategy options.

 

Let’s take Fuji as an example, as both of the track’s races this year will be held over 450km. As established in recent seasons, a GT500 car can now comfortably go for 40 laps with a single tank of fuel, or around 180km.

That means a 300km is easily completed with one fuel stop, with a shorter first stint and a longer second one.

For a race of either 450km or 500km, two stops will be necessary. But with a 500km race, the rule that dictates that the starting driver can’t do the middle stint, combined with the minimum drive-time rule (each driver must complete at least a third of the race distance) means all teams are pretty much forced to do a longer middle stint.

That leaves two main strategic options: either shortening the first stint (‘short-long-long’) or shortening the last (‘long-long-short’). 

The reason that a 450km race opens up more options is that the shorter minimum stint (33 laps instead of 37 at Fuji) widens the fuel window and opens up more chances for teams to gamble on stopping much earlier or later.

 

Before, teams would need to push on to around lap 28 to be certain of making the 110-lap distance with one more stop. But now, if a team pushed fuel mileage in the latter two stints, that would imply that the first stop could be completed as early as lap 15. A team could gamble coming in even sooner than that and bank on a caution period to help save fuel.

The potential for more strategy variation is obvious. As well as encouraging teams to do something different on fuel, the shorter distance makes it likely we’ll see more teams trying to get by with just one tyre change. That would result in one longer stop and one shorter one, with teams diverging on whether they take the shorter stop early or late.

When it comes to Suzuka, the longer track length and resulting shorter lap count (78 laps) means the benefits are not quite as pronounced as they are at Fuji, but the same principles apply - except, perhaps, that skipping a tyre change would be that much harder to pull off. 

Regardless of the venue, the need for two pitstops means a 450km race is still going to have a different feel to a 300km one, but with the added bonus of opening up more strategy options than a 500km race.

While having at least one true endurance event on the schedule would be even better, and can hopefully happen in 2023, fans can still look forward to a much meatier 2022 calendar than those of recent years.