The venue of the penultimate and eighth round of the Super GT series was Autopolis in Hita, Oita Prefecture. Over 40,000 fans visited the circuit throughout the weekend and fully enjoyed high speed battles among the GT cars which show up in the Kyusyu area only once a year.

Autopolis hosted an exhibition 'All star' race in 1999, which was the first ever GT race event at the track, and has become one of the regular venues of the series since 2003. As it is relatively new to the GT race community, the versatility of each team has often been tested at Autopolis, particularly when it comes to their car set up.

The track has many corners in succession and a large difference in elevation during a lap and, combined with the lower μ (coefficient of friction) of its surface, these factors make tough conditions for tires. Therefore, ADVAN brought tires with a higher durability to this event with two types of compounds, the soft and medium. The two ADVAN shoed teams in the GT500 class chose the softer ones for the race.

Under the clear autumn sky, all sessions of the weekend (beginning with the free practice on Friday) were run on dry conditions. Because of the detailed equalization measures employed in the Super GT series, such as weight handicap or performance lifting, some of the teams might decide not to finish in the higher ranks in this race to elude the handicaps for the next and final round at Fuji Speedway, which is famous for its high speed track. Because of this, a true performance of each car in this particular round was difficult to gauge but still the drivers gave high ratings to the ADVAN tires.

ECLIPSE ADVAN SC430 was seventh fastest in the first qualifying session on Saturday and proceeded to the Super Lap session. However, they had to settle for ninth in the Super Lap because they had already used up two sets of new tires in the previous session and had to run on used ones. WOODONE ADVAN Clarion GT-R qualified in 13th.

The qualifying sessions of the GT300 class were dominated by ADVAN equipped cars. Confirming its recent good form, JIMCENTER ADVAN F430, of which Tetsuya Tanaka took the wheel, was the only car to register the time in the 1 minute 50 second bracket in the Super Lap and took the pole position of the class. This was Tanaka's first pole position in five years since he accomplished the same feat here in the seventh round of 2003, the year Autopolis was added to the calendar for the first time. The ADVAN shoed Ferrari was followed by Daishin ADVAN Z, Privee KENZO Asset Shiden, WedsSport IS350 and Yunker Power Taisan Porsche, which meant the top five slots were occupied by ADVAN users.

Takeshi Tsuchiya was the starting driver of ECLIPSE ADVAN SC430 which sat on the ninth grid for the race. Although many of the rival teams opted for shorter first stints, because they thought the track surface would be tough on the tires, Tsuchiya went on to Lap 31 which is around the halfway point of the race. After the driver change to Hiroaki Ishiura, the car resumed the race in 14th and eventually finished in 12th thanks to his gritty driving.

WOODONE ADVAN Clarion GT-R started the race with Joao Paulo De Oliveira at the wheel. He managed to move up from 13th to 8th with a tremendous effort but the car had a problem in its power steering system during the second stint when Seiji Ara was driving and finished in 16th.

In the GT300 class, the leading ADVAN equipped cars in the qualifying sessions were also fast on Sunday and JIMCENTER ADVAN F430, Privee KENZO Asset Shiden and Daishin ADVAN Z led the race.

Among them, the star of the race was Daishin ADVAN Z. The starting driver and the team's ace, Takayuki Aoki, came in to the pit earlier than his rivals, on Lap 25, and the car was entrusted to the team's youngster, Tomonobu Fujii, for the remaining 35 laps. Aoki closely followed the early race leader, JIMCENTER ADVAN F430, during his stint and his in-lap he was very fast. The team responded to his splendid driving with a quick pit stop and Fujii was also fast and consistent with the medium compound tires which the team chose for the longer second stint.

The medium tires took longer to warm up than the soft tires. Nevertheless, Fujii kept a frenetic pace from his out-lap and steadily moved up the ranks while the rivals made their routine stops one after another. When all cars completed their stops, Fujii found himself in the top slot by more than 30 seconds. He continued to run the remaining laps without making any mistakes and brought back the gleeful first victory for the Daishin team which had come back to the Super GT series this year.

　[Result : the winner of the GT300 class]
 
"Honestly, I just feel relieved. We have been known as a potential winner but we haven't made it until today. After we narrowly missed the win in the fifth round at Sugo, I thought this Autopolis round would be our final opportunity to win, so I am happy to make it finally.
"The race went just as planned. Tire management was my biggest concern because I thought we would be able to win if we could manage to follow the leader in the early stage of the race, nursing my tires as much as possible.
"I expected that the grip would begin to deteriorate soon but it actually came much later than anticipated, thanks to ADVAN's effort on improvement. It wasn't easy for me to run on the softer tires but I was able to stay out a bit longer than I thought I could.
"Then I changed to Fujii and we sent him to the track with the harder tires to make it through to the finish with a long stint. At that time, our calculation showed that we were 30 seconds ahead of the nearest rival but we actually had a 35 second gap with the second placed car when everyone completed the pit stop and Fujii's pace was good and consistent. Then I was convinced that we would win.
"This is what I meant when I said the race went as planned. It looks difficult for us to win the championship title but we will try to do our best in the final round."

"Based on the data collected during the group tests at Motegi and Fuji, we added some fine tunings to prepare the tires for Autopolis. The basic idea for development was to improve the grip of the front tires by giving careful consideration to the balance of tire construction as the coefficient of the track surface friction is relatively low here.
"The race result was influenced by a strategic decision of the teams and so on. But I think the performance of our tires was good.
"Some of the ADVAN user teams performed very well in the GT300 class. Before the start of the race, I wished that JIMCENTER ADVAN F430 would have a good race because it had often been hit by unfortunate accidents this year.
"As a result, Daishin ADVAN Z scored a splendid win far ahead of the pack. But win or lose, we are satisfied with the consistent performance of the tires in long stints."