GT300 first finish - 9th place
 

9th overall, and it looks good doing it... once they shake out a few of the setup issues, it looks like this car is going places.


After the unsuccessful Super GT race in Okayama Round 2 of SUPER GT -FUJI GT 500km RACE took place on Friday 4 May at Fuji Speedway. R&D SPORT's SUBARU BRZ GT300 driven by Tetsuya Yamano and Kouta Sasaki started from 12th on the grid after the qualifying and finished 9th in the final race. After the rain of previous days, Fuji Speedway was overcast on the final morning. The free practice session began at 8:30am on a track that was not still completely dry, and so, the R&D SPORT team could not check the SUBARU BRZ's settings with slick tyres on a dry surface before the final race.
http://www.tune86.com/sites/default/...00_supergt.jpg

Tetsuya Yamano in pits:
http://www.tune86.com/sites/default/...uya_yamano.jpg

The race was about to get underway in front of 57,000 spectators when it suddenly began to rain just before the 2:00 pm start, and the organisers made a hurried decision to change to a SC start, and so a Safety Car (SC) led the start of the race. With almost all cars coming back to their pit to switch to wet tyres during the 2 SC laps, Kouta Sasaki behind the wheel of the SUBARU BRZ also got over the unstable conditions at the beginning of the race on wet tyres. When track surfaces had dried up, he came back to the pit to fit slick tyres to his SUBARU BRZ. Sasaki then drove at a more fuel-efficient pace in the first half of the race because the team had made a 2-pit-stop strategy for this long race.

http://www.tune86.com/sites/default/...gt300_fuji.jpg°
http://www.tune86.com/sites/default/...05/supergt.jpg



Sasaki then handed the car over to Yamano for the middle stage of the race. Yamano gradually picked up his speed as he got used to the dry conditions and moved up to 9th after the halfway point of the race before it started raining again. This forced him to come back to the pit to change tyres and at the same time, Sasaki took over the car. He finished the race without any problems in 9th to come home with the first points for the SUBARU BRZ.

http://www.tune86.com/sites/default/...ano_sasaki.jpg
http://www.tune86.com/sites/default/...am_supergt.jpg

Yamano later said, “We still have many issues to solve with settings, but I am relieved to finish the race this time. Lots of SUBARU fans filled up the SUBARU fan seats, and I was encouraged so much by their cheers. I would like to thank them for their support. We'll prepare to do battle in the heat in the next race in Sepang and we hope fans will enjoy our racing out there”.
http://www.tune86.com/sites/default/...ubaru_fans.jpg







Hideharu Tatsumi, Deputy General Manager of STI Motorsport Project Office
http://www.tune86.com/sites/default/...ru_tatsumi.jpg



Videos:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxAgSFvSMCU"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxAgSFvSMCU[/ame]

R&D SPORT / STI Subaru BRZ team video by Subaru Global:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9p_85IeZM0"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9p_85IeZM0[/ame]

BRZ video from JDM clips
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t60Rxr5sF14"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t60Rxr5sF14[/ame]

some general footage
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO_V0B1wuvc"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO_V0B1wuvc[/ame]

Gosh, I love the Honda car. Too bad they don't make 'em :(

the GT300 is just pure beauty!

Agree, good looking car!

I still think the MR-2/MR-S GT300 car was the best... though the last gen Celica GT300 car (which didn't seem to make many appearances) did look pretty good too...
But the NSXs also looked quite good (though the F1-style fin up top took away from the clean look)

Cuz it wasn't a Celica. I just had a shell of Celica, but everything else were supra lol

Oops - I meant from looks alone.
They all use the 3S-GTE anyways, so it's really just cosmetics...

BEEEEARRRRRRRZZETOOO!