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Monday, 3rd March 2008

Two-day test takes place at former Japanese GP venue.

Preparations for the new Super GT season have kicked-off with a two-day test session at the Suzuka circuit in Mie.

The test at the former home of the Japanese Grand Prix saw the leading teams come together, with cars in both the GT500 and GT300 hitting the track ahead of the opening round of the season back at Suzuka later this month.

Favourable conditions greeted the teams for the first session of the test on Friday, with the main focus for the majority of the grid being to select tyres and work on set-up for the first 300km race of the year.

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In the GT500 class, Benoit Treluyer posted the quickest time with a lap of 1min 53.383secs at the wheel of the #23 Xanavi Nismo GT-R, putting him narrowly ahead of the #36 Petronas Tom's SC430 of Andre Lotterer and the #100 Raybrig NSX of former Super Aguri Formula 1 driver Yuji Ide.

The three were the only drivers to dip below the 1min 54secs mark as Nissan, Toyota and Honda were all represented near the top of the times, although Treluyer's lap was still a second behind the quickest time posted in the session last year.

In the second session of the day, a heavy accident for defending co-champion Ralph Firman brought out the red flags after just ten minutes, with the former Jordan F1 man going off into the barriers on the entry to the chicane and making severely damaging the bodywork on the #1 ARTA Honda NSX. It was an incident that led to a ten-minute delay and forced the NSX to the garage for the remainder of the day.

In terms of laps, the quickest time in the session went to Takashi Kogure, although his lap of 1min 54.206secs in the #18 Takata Dome NSX was almost a second slower than the fastest time of the morning. Defending co-champion Daisuke Ito, in his first official test since switching from Honda to Toyota during the off-season, posted a quick lap of 1min 55.160secs at the wheel of the #6 ENEOS SC430.

In the GT300 class, it was the #2 Privée KENZO Asset Shiden of Hiroki Katoh that was on the pace throughout the day.

A quickest lap of 2min 06.798secs in the afternoon was good enough to secure class honours on the day, with the #81 Fairlady Z of Takayuki Aoki and Tomonobu Fujii second and the #46 Mola Z of Kazuki Hoshino and Hironobu Yasuda third – with the top three split by just half a second.

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