ADVAN / MOTOR SPORTS [SUPER GT 2007 / Round 3]

The third round of the Super GT series was held at Fuji International Speedway. In the middle of the Golden Week holidays, and with the help of fine weather on both the qualifying day and race day, as many as 85,000 motor sports fans attended during the two-day event.

In the GT500 class, car no.25 ECLIPSE ADVAN SC430 and no.24 WOODONE ADVAN Clarion Z were equipped with ADVAN tires. For this race, car no.24 was updated to the full 2007 specifications and a significant step forward in performance was expected, although the team hadn't done any testing with their new car prior to the race due to the delay of delivery.

Meanwhile, the car no.25 remained as the updated 2006 model. But the team executed a clever strategy to perform well in this Fuji round and a good result was expected for them too.

Qualifying sessions on 3rd May turned out to be a hard time for car no.24 as the team was still in the process of finding a proper set up for the car. On the other hand, car no.25 answered expectations with a good performance. The car marked the fifth fastest time in the first qualifying session and got through to the Super Lap session for the first time this season.

Takeshi Tsuchiya, who drove in the Super Lap, performed well and broke his best lap time in the morning session by almost four tenth of a second. However, in scrutineering after the session, it was found that the ground clearance of the car was less than the prescribed minimum clearance, resulting in the deletion of his time. Consequently, car no.25 had to start the race from the tenth grid.

In the GT300 class, car no.88 AKTIO MURCIE RG-1 showed its pace from the practice session and Marco Apicella clocked the fastest time of the class in the Super Lap. It was their first pole position since last year's SUGO round.

The fine weather continued during race day, but the race itself was a little bit nasty. During the formation lap of the rolling start, one of the cars on the front row was stopped by mechanical trouble, which caused an additional formation lap to be run. Because of this, the race distance was reduced to 109 laps from the planned 110 laps.

After some more accidents, ADVAN users in the GT500 class were also hit by unfortunate troubles. Car no.24 was involved in an accident and crashed out in lap 13, and car no.25 had to give up the race due to mechanical failure.

In the GT300 class, it was very strategic race because some teams took one stop and the others took two stops, as the race distance of this Fuji round was 500km and much longer than that of Suzuka and Okayama round (300km). This meant that the cars on the two stop strategy had to run quicker on the track to make up for the time that would be spent by their additional pit stops.

Car no.88 had to take two stops because its fuel consumption rate was higher than its rivals, and stepped down from the leading position after its second pit stop. After that, however, the car pursued the new leader extremely hard and climbed back to the second, where it eventually finished with 14 seconds delay.

Among the Porsches, that are usually very fast in Fuji, car no.26 YUNKEL POWER TAISAN PORSCHE gave a splendid performance. Although it finished low due to the two stop strategy and unfortunate track position when the race was briefly stopped by the red flag, the car kept a really good pace to the end. This was proved by the fact that Nobuteru Taniguchi marked the fastest lap of the class for the honor of their reputation as a top contender. At the same time, it was also proof of the consistent performance of ADVAN tires.