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F-Nippon / Super GT Features & Interviews
SuperGT - Hottori And Dumbreck Triumph At Fuji Speedway
11/05/2006
Naoki Hattori and Peter Dumbreck have won the third round of the Super GT series at the Fuji Speedway.
Over 54,000 spectators watched Hattori and Dumbreck win in their Lexus SC430/DL this week.
Their lightweight car, which featured a number of special performance tweaks including a bigger air restrictor, enjoyed a 50bhp advantage and was able to achieve higher speeds than its rivals, especially end of longest straight at Fuji.
Pole starters Yuji Tachikawa and Toranosuke Takagi lead for the first few laps but their Bridgestone-shod Lexus retired from the race early due to a stage due broken driveshaft, allowing Hattori and Dumbreck’s winning car to lead from the fifth lap.
Qualifying
Tachikawa and Takagi - the 2005 champions who won twice in Fuji Speedway last year – racked up another fine drive in qualify, with Tachikawa scoring his record 11th pole position.
Most other Bridgestone-shod racers ran with the GT Association’s 25kg special performance adjustment. Despite the difficulty this posed, Tachikawa and Takagi started at the front of the grid.
Other Bridgestone-shod cars at the front of the grid were third-placed Andre Couto and Katsuyuki Hiranaka their Toyota Supra, Juichi Wakisaka and Andre Lotterer in their Lexus SC430 were forth, with Daisuke Ito and Ralph Firman in their Honda NSX in fifth spot.
Race
Tachikawa made a fine start and established a large gap ahead of the other cars, but his Lexus immediately slowed after entering the first chicane, allowing him to lose his position to Lotterer who drove two stints.
Unfortunately, the German driver had an accident just before pitting when he touched a 300-class car at the final corner, which caused a flat tyre.
Wakisaka maintained his second position after pitting and Akira Iida and Tatsuya Kataoka in Bridgestone-shod Lexus came worked their way to the front to create a nail-biting race.
Eventually Iida passed Wakisaka with a mere ten laps to go. Wakisaka finished third but had a 35 second penalty due to Lotterer’s incident with the 300-class car.
Team TOM’S protested and the race result in still provisional pending a ruling. Satoshi Motoyama and Tsugio Matsuda in their Bridgestone Nissan Fairlady Z finally took the chequered flag after starting at the back of the 500-class grid due to their engine change after Matsuda’s engine problem in the morning free practice.
Bridgestone Tyre Engineer Yoshihiro Hosoya:
“The cars and teams using our tyres had a hard time at Fuji Speedway. Additional weight and smaller air restrictors on their cars severely cut their power and braking performance. But they performed well – it was a fantastic race with a huge number of fans at the circuit.
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