First Super GT Win For The Subaru Legacy B4 In Suzuka
By OR Staff, Photography courtesy of Super GT
Round 6 of the Super GT series, the 121 lap race at Suzuka Circuit, held some surprises for the 33,000-strong crowd. Longtime favorite ARTA came out on top again with the new Honda HSV-010 and the Subaru Legacy B4 took its first ever win in the series.
In the GT300 class the R&D Sport Subaru Legacy B4 (driven by Tetsuya Yamano and Kota Sasaki) emerged the winner. Starting from 11th position on the GT300 class grid, the team worked up steadily through the pack and finally took the lead using faster work during the last pit stop.
Even more impressive, this is a team that made its GT debut part way through last season and skipped Round 4 of this season to make some major changes in the machine, changes which helped lead to this victory. For the team, this is its first podium finish and win.
“This Legacy made its debut in last year’s Pokka GT, but it was only able to run a lap time of 2 min. 15 sec. and I thought things would be tough. Now, a year later, I never would have thought that we would be the winners here at Suzuka,” said Tetsuya Yamano
Up in the GT500 class, having won the pole position in yesterday’s qualifying, the ARTA HSV-010 started from the front row with Yuji Ide as the first driver. A collision with a back marker in the early stages of the race, and the time it took to remove the damaged parts from the machine, dropped Ide back to 4th position at one point.
But the Motul Autech GT-R that overtook the ARTA car also hit a back marker and spun out. In addition, the Raybrig HSV-010 took a significant time loss due to prolonged pit work and the Epson HSV-010 dropped far back in the pack when one of its tires was not properly mounted in its last pit stop.
These mishaps allowed the ARTA HSV-010 to recover the lead and hold it to the end. The team’s third driver, Takashi Kobayashi, who had won the pole position for the team in Saturday’s qualifying, ended up not driving in today’s race and a tag team relay of ex-F1 drivers (Ide, Ralph Firman, Ide, Firman) completed the 700km race successfully to win their first victory of the season with a 22-sec. margin over the 2nd-place finishing Motul Autech R35 Nissan GT-R.
For the ARTA team, this was their first win since the final round of last season at Motegi. For the Honda HSV-010 GT, this was the third victory of the season, following wins at Round 2 at Okayama and Round 5 at Sugo.
