2021 AUTOBACS SUPER GT Round 7
2021 AUTOBACS SUPER GT Round7 MOTEGI GT 300km RACE
Dates: October 23st-24nd, 2021
Location: Twin Ring Motegi (Tochigi Prefecture)
Attendance: 18,100
Qualifying: 23th
Finals: DNF (did not finish)
Points earned:0pt
Series rank: 10th（25pt）
The 2021 SUPER GT is at last in its final stage of the season. Round 7 of the series was held at Twin Ring Motegi from November 6th to 7th. This is the second time this season for it to be held at Twin Ring Motegi. In the round 4 that was held at Motegi in July, car #4, GOODSMILE HATSUNE MIKU AMG, won 5th place and got points after coming in at 5th place in the qualifying round.
Here the Balance of Performance (BoP) weight of the Mercedes-AMG GT3 was 45 kg following round 6. The 1330 kg, which is still as ever the heaviest of all GT300 class vehicles, hasn’t changed.
In addition, the Success Weight (= SW/formerly known as the Weight Handicap), which has been loaded on based on the usual sporting regulations of the season, and annual results, has been halved in this round 7 with “Points earned x 1.5 kg and rounded up to the nearest whole number”. Even if the weight added according to the result of the previous race was added, it has been reduced from 60 kg to 38 kg.
Looking only at past results, it is one of the circuits that is a good fit for Nobuteru Taniguchi, Tatsuya Kataoka, and the Mercedes-AMG GT3. It’s not an easy battle by any means, but we can expect to achieve our goal of ranking high this time as well.
[November 6th(Sat)]
Weather: clear
Track: dry
Air temperature/Track temperature GT300 Q1 start (14:15): 18℃/29℃; GT300 Q2 finish (15:20): 17℃/26℃
There was a wide, clear blue sky for he official practice at 9:25 a.m. It started with Kataoka driving, who has been going on for 5 consecutive races since the last Motegi. Under slightly chilly conditions, with a temperature of 13℃ and a road surface temperature of 22℃, Kataoka heads to the course just as the session starts.
He recorded 1’47.313 on the 6th lap of the measurement, while checking the machine balance and the feel of the two types of tire compounds brought in. Assuming 7th place at the time of passing the control line, after getting a checkup in the pit, he recorded a personal best of 1’47.170 on the 10th lap.
After calibration for the Full Course Yellow (FCY) system, which has a limit of 80 km/h for all cars, it’s time for Taniguchi to take over the steering just after 10 a.m.
Taniguchi had a long run after checking the setup and the feel of the tires. As the sun got stronger and the road surface temperature steadily rose, Taniguchi consistently did one lap after another around the 1’48s range. He finally ran the entire course doing 18 laps, and then once again returned the steering to Kataoka.
When Kataoka changed tires and returned to the course, he entered the exclusive running slot for the GT300 class, and completed continuous laps. He tried a different warm-up method than in the morning, but he didn’t break his record time in the first half of the session. He finished in 13th place overall.
In the 20-minute FCY test run slot, Taniguchi took charge again and completed the final check for the qualifying round.
The official qualifying round in the afternoon was held using The Grouping System, with a total of 28 cars, because one car was absent as a result of an accident in the previous race. Car #4 runs in Group B of Q1. The team entrusted Motegi master Kataoka with winning Q1, which was expected to be a tough race given the impressions we had in the morning.
At 2:38 p.m., just as the pit exit for Group B opened in Q1, Car #4 Good Smile Hatsune Miku AMG and Kataoka headed for the course. While checking the change in the road surface temperature that has risen to 29°C, he puts more passion in with each of the two measuring laps from the out lap, and from there he goes on a continuous attack.
First, on the 4th lap, he stood at 3rd place at the time of measurement with 1’47.468, but on the following lap his time went up to 1’47.260. However, it did not reach time increase like that of his opponents, so he finished in 12th place in Q1 Group B, and did not advance to Q2. Tallied up with Group A, they would start from grid 23 in the following day’s final.
[November 7th Sun] ]
Weather：clear
Track：dry
Air temperature/Track temperature Before start (12:55): 19℃/29℃ ＞ Mid-race (13:55): 20℃/30℃ ＞ Final stages (14:30): 19℃/27℃ ＞ Finish (15:00): 18℃/25℃
Following on from the previous day, Sunday was also a fine day. Although there is a limit on the number of people who can enter, the circuit was packed with spectators. Before the 20-minute warm-up run after the drivers made their appearance, an “F2-B” belonging to the JASDF Matsushima Air Base did a flight show as a welcoming, which can be said to be a specialty of Motegi races. Excitement around the circuit increases towards the deciding race.
The course layout of Twin Ring Motegi is known for having a lot of stop-and-go, and it’s a circuit that is harsh on the breaks. In addition, you have to be strict about fuel efficiency, and the driver’s management skills are also tested, in order to reduce gasoline consumption as much as possible, so as to shorten the refueling time during pit work. Under those conditions, Motegi is classified as a circuit where it is “difficult to overtake”. At the point when the driver has completed the required number of laps that is generally one-third of the prescribed driving distance, the “minimum” strategy of taking a long pit stop and second stint, and gaining lap time at the clean spots on the course is the standard procedure.
However, GOODSMILE RACING & TeamUKYO’s victory or defeat would be decided from the rear grid as they came in 23rd place in the qualifying round, so in addition to a strategy that followed theory, they also made other choices heading into the final. Kataoka, who completed 10 laps in the warm-up run just before whilst doing a feel check, headed for the grid with the objective of “somehow getting into the point range”.
The final started at 1:00 p.m. Although the temperature was 19°C, the road temperature had risen to 30°C. Kataoka has excellent tactics from a rolling start. In the opening lap battle, he flies into the inside track at the third corner and takes out car #6 (Team LeMans Audi R8 LMS), which at first was at the 22nd grid up ahead. At the 4th corner of the following lap, he dodges car #7 (Studie PLUS BMW) and moves up to 21st place on the second lap.
After that, car #18 (UPGARAGE NSX GT3), which was the pole sitter, was sidelined due to some trouble and ended up in 20th place. From the 3rd lap, he literally fought a “High-quality contact”, hand-to-hand battle with car #360 (RUNUP RIVAUX GT-R) which was following close behind.
The NISSAN GT-R NISMO GT3 boasts outstanding strength among FIA-GT3 vehicles, and shows another dimension of speed with moderate acceleration from getting out of corners due to turbo-supercharging. In spite of the harsh situation, that is to say, “There is so much difference in performance…it’s ridiculous to fight anymore”, Kataoka manages to keep control of the Mercedes-AMG GT3, which cannot compete at all at linear speed, and continues his desperate defense
Under such circumstances, when the overlap with the GT500 car started on the 9th lap, car #65 (LEON PYRAMID AMG), which was right in front of car #4 Good Smile Hatsune Miku AMG, was forced off course by a hairpin curve. It stops in the gravel and FCY is introduced to collect the vehicle. By accelerating at the restart from FCY, he got the jump on car #52 (Saitama Toyopet GB GR Supra GT), and got back to his position of 18th place, “while mixed in with, and bashed by 500 cars”, in the melee.
Then he entered the 13th lap. Kataoka had “Caught up with car #2 (muta Racing Lotus MC), which had slowed down whilst chasing car #87 (Granseed Lamborghini GT3) that was up ahead.” As the two cars competed, Kataoka did not fail to miss the fact that at the start of the second corner their acceleration had slightly slowed down.
Whilst continuing straight and side-by-side up to the 3rd corner, Kataoka finds a space on the inside lane of the two cars that are neck and neck, going from the center of the course to the outer lane.
“Honestly, I would never normally overtake in an ‘All or nothing’ style, at the time of entry. Normally, the absolute priority is to get the car to the goal, and when I took a drastic turn to the riskier end in terms of risk control just this time only, I knew my intuition had been right. I’m sorry for car #87, and frankly speaking, it was a total mistake in judgement on my part. But unless cars under these conditions are prepared for that, they will never be able create space by acceleration and overtake.”
Just as Kataoka reflects on it, after breaking he threw off car #2 at the turn-in, but he had a collision with car #87 on the outer lane, and the front right of car #4 Good Smile Hatsune Miku AMG was damaged. He ended up driving slowly to the 5th corner up ahead, getting the machine to a safe place, and stopping.
This has been the first time that the GOODSMILE RACING & Team UKYO has retired from a race due to a collision since Taniguchi and Kataoka joined together in 2012. It was a round that symbolized how tough the 2021 season has been, but we will continue to prepare in all areas so that we can completely forget this disappointment in the immediate “No time to wait”, finals.
■Comments from the Team
This time, I would say…I was a little too afraid of graining in terms of choosing the tires. I feel that if I had chosen the tires I should have, we could have even won the championship. Looking at the success of the winning car and the racing of the other teams, I wondered whether we would definitely have gotten to a decent position, if I had been able to select the tires properly. Yokohama tires have some good points, and the choices are endless. By introducing a method of analysis that has a bit more precision for technology on our side, we would like to be able to make stronger suggestions on the tire manufacturer side of things as well. We have to make progress with each other, and introduce a new system next time so that we can get a comprehensive view of the entire race, including opposition cars, and be able to compare it with our overall performance. I think it should have a positive effect on both BoP and tire development.
We really haven’t built anything up this season. This time, I felt a little like we missed something with the tires we brought in, and we were forced into a situation where we had to choose the harder ones even in the qualifying round. Even in the final, we couldn’t increase the pace because of using harder tires, so we couldn’t show our good points. However, including such points, there is no choice but for accumulation. And the final decisive blow was…the slowness of speed when going straight (cries). If you have a little more speed when going straight, that alone will give you a wider range of strategies. There are other various issues that we need to work on, such as reviewing work done in the pit, but things are too strict in terms of regulations and performance adjustment. Anyway, when I get too conscious, like “We have to get through the qualifying round!”…I can’t even come up with a strategy. Both the team and the tire manufacturer must confirm the data and accumulation together, and move forwards whilst sharing with and supporting one another.
This time…what can I say? (bitter smile). After all, it is to do with performance adjustment, and how harsh it is, or that is to say, we cannot deny the “uneven feeling” of pace of the current GT300. It might just sound like the whining of a loser, but the whole of Mercedes has sunk to the bottom. Nevertheless, if I’m asked if we are ready to do everything we can do now, with a perfect score of 100, that is, “We’ve done the absolute best we can!”, even that isn’t enough. The points we need to improve are clear to see, but anyway, we are now stuck in a loop of a vicious circle of pressure that’s coming from this BoP. From the surroundings, it may seem that “GSR-likeness has been revived” in these last several races, but basically we can only get it done in the races against weak opponents, so I want to change the flow somehow.
This time too, we were in a harsh situation from the qualifying round, and I started the race thinking, “I’ll do my best somehow”, but if you don’t just try some kind of strategy, such as thoroughly shutting out the race to the surrounding cars, or using the full width of the course and not just edging by, then you can’t compete seriously. Although I was pushed out from the course and had a light collision, I fought in the mix with 500 cars, but there was just too much that seemed to be out of my hands. I have experience, and usually limit that kind of risk so…I’m sorry to everyone. Perhaps if this becomes a longer race, I think the quality of Mercedes will be shown even more, but with the current performance adjustment of a distance of 300 km, it’s really tough. Right now, I have absolutely no advantage, and a vicious circle has come about in which I can only race under such circumstances.
