Motegi GT 250km Race Preview: Championships On The Line In The Grand Final!

It all comes down to one final championship round in the Autobacs Super GT Series.

A journey that began with forty-four teams and cars across two classes in the spring, now sees a select few teams that can still win the GT500 and GT300 Championships – but in each class, only one dream will come true in the Motegi GT 250km Race.

(For a more in-depth look at the points, take a look at DSC’s breakdown of the championship permutations heading into the final round: GT500 | GT300)

For the eleventh straight year, Twin Ring Motegi – the state-of-the-art motorsport complex situated in the forests of eastern Tochigi Prefecture just 150 kilometers from the heart of Tokyo – hosts the deciding race of the Super GT championship. A 53-lap, 250 kilometer showdown to decide it all across both classes of competition.

Twin Ring Motegi is one of the three top-flight motorsport facilities and still a marvel from the first days of operation in 1997. The 4.8 kilometer road course is the annual home of the Japanese motorcycle Grand Prix, and boasts an array of low-to-medium speed corners segmented by long straights and heavy braking zones, offering many places to pass, and to battle wheel-to-wheel until the bitter end of the race.

And per Super GT tradition, the Success Ballast has been removed from each and every full-time entry in the field. Meaning this race will be settled by the best-drilled mechanics, the savviest engineers, the fastest cars, and the bravest drivers – just as it should be at the end of a season that’s spanned eight rounds and over 3,000 kilometers of racing. For the first time since the start of the year, we’ll see the entire field at its full potential, uninhibited and unrestricted.

One team in GT500, and another team in GT300, will pass through Victory Corner and take the chequered flag as champions in the pinnacle of Japanese motorsport, their lives changed forever as their names are added to a roll of honour featuring some of the greatest drivers in the world.

Last year, Jenson Button and Naoki Yamamoto fended off the challenge of Ryo Hirakawa and Nick Cassidy, and the world-famous royal blue Raybrig Honda NSX of Team Kunimitsu won its first ever championship. This year, a new champion will be crowned, and that champion will almost certainly come from the camp of Lexus and Toyota Gazoo Racing.

After seven races, two Lexus teams are separated by just seven points going into the final race of the season. Kazuya Oshima and Kenta Yamashita in the #6 Wako’s 4CR LC500 for Lexus Team LeMans, leading the #37 KeePer TOM’s LC500 of Hirakawa and Cassidy. One team seeking their first championship in seventeen years, the other, looking for their second title in three seasons.

Team director Juichi Wakisaka, who won his first of three GT500 Drivers’ Championships with Team LeMans, has instilled the belief in his young drivers that they can become champions in 2019. They are still soaring high after scoring consecutive wins in the heat of summer, including the biggest win of the season, the Fuji 500 Miles.

Once a teenage phenom and already a GT300 Champion, 32-year-old Oshima is now on the doorstep of his first GT500 Drivers’ Championship in his eleventh season. His first-year co-driver Yamashita, at 24, represents the future of Toyota Gazoo Racing: A Formula 3 champion, a Super Formula race winner, a GT500 race winner, and this year, a WEC newcomer on the path to racing for TGR in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

All they need to do is win, or finish second, and the title goes to Team LeMans.

Sitting seven points behind them, are the KeePer TOM’s crew led by Hirakawa, and newly crowned Super Formula Champion Cassidy, both set to become the youngest multiple GT500 Champions in history.

Cassidy will look to succeed his great rival Yamamoto and become only the fifth driver to win the elusive “Double Championship” of Japan – and don’t discount what a second GT500 crown could mean to Hirakawa, the young man who still has ambitions of challenging the world’s stage, and a Motegi winner in 2015.

Under first-year team director Jun Yamada, the number 37 KeePer TOM’s LC500 is riding a wave of consistent results, five straight top-five finishes and three podiums in that span. If they win and the Wako’s LC500 finishes outside the top two, the title is theirs.

They are the two realistic title contenders, but one longshot contender enters the final weekend still mathematically eligible to win the GT500 Championships – if they can qualify on pole position and go on to win the race.

That would be the number 23 Motul Autech NISMO GT-R of Tsugio Matsuda and Ronnie Quintarelli, winners from pole in 2014 and 2017, looking to make the greatest comeback in Super GT history and overcome a 20.5 deficit on the last weekend of the season – but they can only do that with a win, the Wako’s LC500 finishing out of the points (or not finishing at all), and the KeePer LC500 finishing fifth or lower.

But if any team can do it, surely its the most successful duo in the history of Super GT’s premier class: Matsuda, a four-time Motegi race winner, the winningest GT500 driver of all time – looking to win a race for the tenth consecutive year – and Quintarelli, a two-time winner at Motegi, where he broke the record and became the series’ first four-time GT500 Champion in 2015.

With the stakes involved, it’ll mean that Saturday qualifying – and the fight for that vital bonus point for pole position – will be a must-follow affair!

There will also be stories to follow among the other teams who only have pride left to fight for in this final race of the season – the final race before the new “Class 1 Alpha” cars debut in 2020. This includes the fifth-generation Toyota GR Supra, replacing the outgoing Lexus marque and the LC500 with it.

The four other teams will be best served not to get in the way of the two leading Lexus fighting for the title, but when looking at the rest of the fleet, a win could vault either the #39 Denso Kobelco SARD LC500 (Heikki Kovalainen/Yuichi Nakayama) or the #38 ZENT Cerumo LC500 (Yuji Tachikawa/Hiroaki Ishiura) to third in the standings and potentially make it a Lexus 1-2-3-4 in the final order. Lexus Team SARD won the second leg of a double-header finale in 2016 to win the title, while the ZENT LC500 finished 2nd here last year.

Nissan avoided a winless 2019 campaign and, apart from the #23 Motul GT-R of Matsuda and Quintarelli and their title hopes hanging by a thread, there’s the team that ended that winless drought, the #3 CraftSports Motul GT-R (Kohei Hirate/Frederic Makowiecki) who could end the year with back-to-back wins after they rolled through the rain at Sugo. The two Michelin-clad GT-Rs will be among the ones to watch.

Don’t overlook the #24 Realize Corporation Advan GT-R (Mitsunori Takaboshi/Jann Mardenborough), Kondo Racing are winners here in the first leg of that 2016 Grand Final. And could this be the last race for the iconic blue #12 Calsonic Impul GT-R (Daiki Sasaki/James Rossiter)? Team Impul aren’t going away, but Calsonic Kansei’s rebranding into the new Marelli Corporation could see one of the most recognizable cars in all of motor racing change its look completely next year.

With nothing but pride left to fight for, the Honda faithful – not just the fans, but the many Honda staff who work just 40 kilometers northwest at Honda R&D Sakura – will look to bid farewell to the last mid-engined GT500 car, the NSX-GT, before its front-engined counterpart debuts in 2020.

It would be appropriate: The first championship round in Motegi was won in 1998 by a Honda. The first-generation NSX signed off with a win in Motegi ten years ago, and perhaps, the last mid-engined NSX-GT can win its last points-paying race.

And it will also be a chance for fans to say farewell to one-half of the reigning championship duo. On Tuesday, Jenson Button announced he’ll be leaving the series at the conclusion of Sunday’s Motegi 250km. One of the series’ most popular drivers and best international ambassadors will close this chapter of his racing life at the venue where, two years ago, he announced the start of the journey, and a year ago, he and Naoki Yamamoto became champions.

The #1 Raybrig NSX-GT will thus be sentimental favourites as Naoki & JB embark on their last ride together. The #8 ARTA NSX-GT (Tomoki Nojiri/Takuya Izawa) has Honda’s only win of the season, at the rain-shortened Okayama round, and will look to win back-to-back races in Motegi and bookend the season with victories. The third Bridgestone-clad NSX, the #17 Keihin NSX-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi/Bertrand Baguette), is also a threat for victory in this final race of the season, on Honda’s home ground.

The GT300 class has its own championship battle – of the 29 cars entered, only four enter the weekend with a chance at winning the title, but likely, it will come down to just two teams: The #55 ARTA Honda NSX GT3 EVO of Shinichi Takagi & Nirei Fukuzumi, and the #96 K-Tunes Racing Lexus RC F GT3 of Morio Nitta & Sena Sakaguchi.

Nitta and Takagi formed one of the longest-running and most successful GT300 driver combinations of all time, winning the championship together in 2002. They are the two winningest drivers in the category. But between these great friends, only one of them can become champion for their respective teams.

The advantage is overwhelmingly in the favour of Takagi, who is trying to win his first GT300 Drivers’ Championship in seventeen years, and his rookie co-driver Fukuzumi, who won the most recent round in Sugo and very nearly put the title completely out of reach.

They can still clinch the title if they finish fourth or better, and those odds improve if they take the pole position and bonus point, where they could then clinch with a top-six finish. But Takagi knows all too well that a lead of fourteen and a half points isn’t safe. Recall last year, when they entered Motegi with a 12-point advantage, only to lose the title on the final day.

Takagi himself has said that the NSX GT3 isn’t as suited to Motegi as some of their rivals’ machines are. This is a race that he and 22-year-old Fukuzumi will not take for granted, especially with Honda’s hopes of coming away with any Super GT titles this year resting entirely on their shoulders.

In the other corner is the K-Tunes RC F of Nitta and Sakaguchi, winners of two of the first three races in 2019. Those wins helped push Nitta back to the top of the all-time wins list, and with a win and a seventh-place finish or lower (excluding bonuses for pole position) for the #55 ARTA NSX, he’ll become the first four-time GT300 Drivers’ Champion and take his first title since 2002.

Together with 20-year-old rookie Sakaguchi, the former Honda junior now returning as a Toyota star and winner on debut, their road won’t be easy as only a win or second place finish can get K-Tunes Racing the title.

If either team wins, it will be the first GT300 Championship for either the Honda NSX GT3 or Lexus RC F GT3. The other two teams left standing are massive longshots and only one of them, if any, will remain eligible for the title after qualifying.

And they are the #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Nobuteru Taniguchi & Tatsuya Kataoka, who can also become four-time GT300 Champions, and the #56 Realize Nissan Mechanic Challenge GT-R GT3 of Kazuki Hiramine and rookie Sacha Fenestraz, seeking their first championships.

Both teams require pole position and a victory, and a lot of help from the 55 and 96 cars, to win the championship for themselves.

Of course, there are still 25 other cars worth keeping an eye on in a loaded GT300 field!

The #65 LEON Pyramid AMG (Naoya Gamou/Togo Suganami) cannot defend its GT300 Championships from 2018, but they can still end the season just as they did last year – and the year before – with a third straight win in Motegi. Both of Gainer’s Nissan GT-Rs have won races this year and the team has a knack of performing well at Motegi, winners in 2013 and 2014. Team JLOC’s two Lamborghini Huracán GT3s are also in the mix for victory.

Meanwhile, the JAF-GT300 and Mother Chassis contingent are trying to avoid a winless 2019 against the GT3 cars. Those in the paddock like the #25 Hoppy Toyota 86 MC (Takamitsu Matsui/Kimiya Sato) – winners in 2016 – along with the #52 Saitama Toyopet GreenBrave Mark X MC (Shigekazu Wakisaka/Hiroki Yoshida) and the #61 Subaru BRZ R&D Sport (Takuto Iguchi/Hideki Yamauchi) to finally get this group on the board with a win.

The shorter race distance will encourage those lighter cars to make use of their tyre wear rates and go the full distance without changing tyres, and the undercut could be crucial in determining a winner in both classes.

Could this also be the weekend that the #7 D’station Aston Martin Vantage GT3 (Tomonobu Fujii/João Paulo de Oliveira) ends a long and frustrating points-scoring drought? Remember, the top eighteen teams in the GT300 Teams’ Championship are automatically guaranteed entry into the entire season for 2020!

Who will seize the crown and become champions of Super GT?

Find out this weekend – qualifying starts this Saturday from 2 PM JST (local time) / 5 AM GMT / 6 AM CET / 1 AM EDT. Then, on Sunday, the green flag flies for the Motegi GT 250km Race at 1:30 PM JST / 4:30 AM GMT / 5:30 AM CET – and mind the change of clocks in the Americas as the race starts Saturday night at 11:30 PM on the East Coast, 8:30 on the West, and 2:30 AM Sunday morning in Brasilia & Argentina. It’s a 3:30 PM start in eastern Australia and 6:30 PM in New Zealand.

Images courtesy of JAF Motor Sports, Toyota, Nissan, and the GT Association (GTA)