Bingo Corvette Fastest in First Suzuka Practice

Bingo Racing and its Callaway Corvette C7 GT3-R was a surprise pacesetter in Friday morning’s opening practice session for this weekend’s Suzuka 1000km.

In the Intercontinental GT Challenge’s first on-track running at Suzuka in six years, Reimei Ito set the fastest time of 2:01.549 aboard the LM Corsa-run No. 9 Callaway Corvette he shares with Ukyo Sasahara and Shinji Takei with 23 minutes left on the clock.

Occasional SUPER GT racer Ito surpassed the best time set by factory Ferrari driver Thomas Neubauer in the No. 555 Maezawa Racing Ferrari 296 GT3, a 2:01.635.

Neubauer’s time came in the early stages of the hour-long session when the circuit was still damp in parts from morning rain and stood as the second-best of the morning, with Bronze Cup-entered cars locking out the top two positions.

Third overall and best of the Pro cars was Team WRT’s No. 32 BMW M4 GT3 EVO of Kelvin van der Linde on a 2:01.686.

Nicky Catsburg put the No. 2 JMR Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R fourth-fastest ahead of the second of the WRT BMWs, the No. 31 car of Augusto Farfus.

Best of the 11-strong Porsche 911 GT3 R contingent in sixth was the No. 7 NewMan-liveried Absolute Racing car in which Laurens Vanthoor set the best time, narrowly ahead of Laurin Heinrich in the No. 6 Origine Motorsport car.

Eighth-fastest was the No. 888 GruppeM Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Luca Stolz.

Team 5ZIGEN’s Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 made a late jump to ninth in the hands of Yu Kanamaru, topping the Silver runners in the process, while the sole Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II in the field completed the top ten in the hands of Yu Kuai.

Despite the tricky conditions at the start of the session, the entire one hour of running was virtually incident free.

K-tunes Racing’s Ferrari 296 GT3 didn’t set a competitive lap time due to turbo issues.

Next up is second practice at 12 p.m. local time (Thursday 11 p.m. EDT).

RESULTS: Paid Practice 1