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F-Nippon / Super GT Features & Interviews
Super GT Feature - Round Five Results
26/07/2006
A huge 50,000 capacity crowd came to watch Round 5 of the Super GT Championship on the weekend, held at SportsLand Sugo near Miyagi. The racing duo of Yuji Tachikawa and Toranosuke Takagi started on pole in their Bridgestone-shod Toyota Lexus SC430, and despite dropping back to second after a pit stop, regained the lead with 10 laps to go, to take the chequered flag – and their first win.
Qualifying
Heavy rain on Friday and wet and damp conditions on Saturday morning made tire choice – rain or slick – absolutely critical for the race.
Despite a predominantly dry track, there were still wet patches dotted around the circuit. In the 500 class only three of the 10 competing cars opted for slicks for the Super Lap.
Tachikawa fitted rain tires – an excellent choice – that pushed him into pole a full second ahead of Loic Duval and Hideki Muto in their Dunlop-shod Honda NSX.
Race
Race morning dawned foggy, but soon cleared for a cloudy but dry race start. Almost all cars opted for slicks without testing – a decision that must be made early on in the morning.
All of the Bridgestone-tired teams made their choice based on vast amounts of date from Bridgestone’s tire engineers.
Takagi led the race in first stage, but after flat-spotting his tires, he pitted earlier than scheduled and handed over to Tachikawa.
With Satoshi Motoyama’s Nissan Fairlady Z in his sights, he raced hard to catch him over 30 laps. With ten laps to Tachikawa passed Motoyama, who was struggling with a back marker, to win.
Yuji Tachikawa
“I would like to thank my team and supporters because our car was perfect. I thought it would be difficult to overtake Motoyama, but I had a chance and took it. I also managed my tires carefully when I was following him, so they were strong throughout the race.”
Toranosuke Takagi
“I tried to extend my lead from start but I locked up my tires under hard braking. It was hard to keep the lead with the flatspotted tires but if I could hand over my car still in first position to Tachikawa, I knew he would make it”
Bridgestone Tire Engineer Yoshihiro Hosoya
“Bridgestone gave the team the right advice for their choice of tires. This proved how reliable our data is and the wide range of our tire performance. We dominated the podium again!”
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