Amidst this pressure, the engineers, the mechanics and everyone on the team gave me the kind of environment where I knew we could win if everyone gave 100 per cent and did their jobs as we knew we could. For this I want to thank everyone. It was an important thing getting this debut win, and even more important will be winning the season series title. I will be working hard with Benoit to reach that goal.
Nearly half a minute further back, Juichi Wakisaka brought the Petronas Tom's SC430 home to the final place on the podium, despite a late charge from the similar Zent Cerumo entry shared by Yuji Tachikawa and Ricahrd Lyons. Just seven seconds separated the two cars at the finish.
The race proved to be a difficult one for the Honda teams, with the #18 Takata Dome NSX of Ryo Michigami and Takashi Kogure taking the flag in seventh nearly a minute and half behind the race winners.
After the disappointment of the early incident, Tsugio Matsuda managed to return to the track in the #12 Calsonic Impul GT-R but failed to secure the point for posting the fastest lap when he failed to reach the 36 lap marker that would have seen the car classified as a finisher.
In the GT300 class, the early running was made by Hiroki Katoh in the pole-sitting #2 Privee Kenzo Asset Shiden entry that had dominated the qualifying and Super Lap session.
Pole-man Hiroki Katoh lead the way although he wasn't able to pull away with Hiroyuki Iiri in the #7 ORC Amemiya SGC-7 keeping him honest. As with the Nissan pairing out front overall, the top-two in the class were pulling away from the rest, with Nobuteru Taniguchi some distance back in third in the #26 Yunker Power Taisan Porsche, and Morio Niita in the #43 ARTA Garaiya entry fourth.
On lap 26, Iiri pitted from second place to hand the car over to team-mate Ryo Orime while Katoh was able to hold out another five laps before pitting to give the car over to Kazuho Takahashi.
![Hiroyuki Iiri/Ryo Orime - ORC Amemiya SGC-7 [Pic credit: Super GT]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/418401.jpg)
