TOM'S Toyota fastest on opening day of Okayama test

Tsuboi's quickest time of the day came late on in the two-hour morning session, as he posted a 1m18.150s to beat the ARTA Honda NSX-GT of Tomoki Nojiri by a scant 0.034 seconds.

Honda's three Bridgestone-shod cars, now using the Type S bodywork revealed last month, locked out positions two through four, with Real Racing newcomer Nobuharu Matsushita setting the pace in the afternoon session with a 1m18.215s set during the 10 minutes of GT500-only running.

The Kunimitsu Honda was third-fastest in the morning in Naoki Yamamoto's hands and fourth overall, just three thousandths behind the Real Racing car.

Completing the top six were two more Toyotas: Tsuboi's title-winning partner from 2021, Yuhi Sekiguchi, was fifth-fastest for new team SARD, while Kazuya Oshima was next up aboard the Rookie Racing car.

Fastest of the all-new Nissan Zs was the #3 NDDP Racing car, now run in-house by NISMO, as Mitsunori Takaboshi set the second-fastest time in the afternoon of 1m18.407s to go seventh overall.

 

The next-best Nissan was the Impul car in ninth with Kazuki Hiramine at the wheel, just behind the second TOM'S Toyota driven by Ritomo Miyata. 

NISMO's flagship #23 car was 11th-fastest overall in the hands of Tsugio Matsuda.

GT300: JLOC Lamborghinis in control

In GT300, the #88 JLOC Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo ended up with the fastest time of the day, a 1m25.210s set by ex-Honda GT500 driver Takashi Kogure.

Shinichi Takagi, who has been reunited with old teammate Morio Nitta at the K-Tunes Lexus squad this year, was second-fastest on a 1m25.555s, followed by Kei Cozzolino in the Pacific CarGuy Racing Ferrari on a 1m25.898s.

The #87 JLOC car set the pace in the afternoon thanks to a 1m26.149s set by Natsu Sakaguchi, but Kosuke Matsuura's time in the morning put the second Lamborghini fourth-overall ahead of the UpGarage Honda NSX GT3 of SUPER GT rookie Kakunoshin Ota.

It was the UpGarage car that caused the day's third and final stoppage when it ground to a halt on track in the afternoon session.

The first two red-flag periods were triggered by offs for the #22 R'Qs Mercedes-AMG GT3, one in the opening minutes of the morning session and the other in the afternoon.

Okayama testing times (GT500 class):

Pos.	No.	Car/Team	Drivers	Morning	Afternoon
1	36	TOM'S Toyota	Giuliano Alesi  Sho Tsuboi	1'18.150	1'19.195
2	8	ARTA Honda	Tomoki Nojiri  Nirei Fukuzumi	1'18.184	1'18.501
3	17	Real Honda	Koudai Tsukakoshi  Nobuharu Matsushita	1'18.227	1'18.215
4	100	Kunimitsu Honda	Naoki Yamamoto  Tadasuke Makino	1'18.218	1'18.815
5	39	SARD Toyota	Yuhi Sekiguchi  Yuichi Nakayama	1'18.314	1'18.965
6	14	Rookie Toyota	Kenta Yamashita  Kazuya Oshima	1'18.396	1'18.566
7	3	NDDP Nissan	Katsumasa Chiyo  Mitsunori Takaboshi	1'18.830	1'18.407
8	37	TOM'S Toyota	Sacha Fenestraz  Ritomo Miyata	1'18.422	1'19.105
9	12	Impul Nissan	Bertrand Baguette  Kazuki Hiramine	1'18.522	1'18.512
10	16	Mugen Honda	Ukyo Sasahara  Toshiki Oyu	1'18.927	1'18.513
11	23	NISMO Nissan	Ronnie Quintarelli  Tsugio Matsuda	1'18.701	1'18.754
12	64	Nakajima Honda	Takuya Izawa  Hiroki Otsu	1'18.702	1'19.466
13	24	Kondo Nissan	Kohei Hirate  Daiki Sasaki	1'19.510	1'19.151
14	38	Cerumo Toyota	Yuji Tachikawa  Hiroaki Ishiura	1'19.283	1'19.216
15	19	Bandoh Toyota	Yuji Kunimoto  Sena Sakaguchi	1'19.328	1'19.320