Motoyama and Treluyer win the first Super GT event of 201101/05/2011
Fuji Speed Way, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan
Super GT Round 2 (First event to be held in 2011)
The 2011 Super GT championship got under way at Fuji Speed Way (on 1 May) one month later than originally scheduled due to the devastating earthquake in northeastern Japan. Despite being held in wet conditions, 36,000 spectators came to the venue. It was an unusually cold weekend causing low tyre grip which made some cars run off the track and lose positions. Satoshi Motoyama and Benoit Treluyer in a Bridgestone shod NISMO Nissan GT-R led the race from lap 18 and went on to win. All Super GT races this year will be held in tribute to northeastern Japan.
Qualifying
Usually during the month of May the weather is warm and fine in Fuji, but this is not the case this year. The teams struggled to warm up their tyres in qualifying, however Hiroaki Ishiura and Takuto Iguchi overcame this in their Toyota Lexus SC430 to take pole position.
Race
It started raining on Sunday morning, the first race taking place in wet conditions. Drivers were behind the safety car for the first 5 laps, with the race really starting from lap 6. Some cars spun and went off due to heavy and intermittent rain. The driver pairing of Motoyama and Treluyer consistently made up positions and over took Tsugio Matsuda and J.P. de Oliveira on lap 18 to lead. The race was stopped by a red flag on lap 60, due to heavy rain. With 6 laps remaining of the scheduled 66 laps, Daisuke Ito and Kazuya Oshima on Bridgestone tyres got close to Motoyama and Treluyer, finishing five seconds behind them in second place. In the GT300 class, Shinichi Takagi and Kosuke Matsuura finished sixth in their Bridgestone shod Garaiya.
Winning drivers
Satoshi Motoyama: ”It is great to be back on Bridgestones again this year and to win the first race. Benoit did a great job and I could not let go of the lead. Bridgestone gave us high performance, even without changing the tyres.”
Benoit Treluyer: ”We had difficult conditions and several cars went off. Bridgestone provided us with very consistent grip in the wet and we kept on track to win. Thank you to the fans for coming to Fuji even when Japan is recovering from an earthquake.”
Bridgestone Tyre engineer: Yoshihiro Hosoya
“Congratulations to Nissan and NISMO. It is great to win the first race in which we are partners again since 2009. We were disappointed by our poor qualifying result under cold conditions, but we were able to show our performance in difficult rain conditions.”
