Suzuka Thursday Notebook

***While all 30 cars have arrived for this weekend’s Suzuka 1000km, 75 Express was left scrambling to secure equipment to operate its Pro class Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo this weekend after its container was delayed in transit while in the South China Sea due to consecutive typhoons. The team was notified today that it will not arrive in time for this weekend’s Intercontinental GT Challenge round.

***It’s understood the Munich-based squad shipped the container in mid-June. It initially made a stop in Singapore before being stuck at sea for more than a week and is now currently docked in Shanghai. It has resulted in the Kenny Habul-owned team receiving help from a number of local teams, including SUPER GT outfits Goodsmile Racing and Arnage Racing, with equipment such as pit gantries, and assistance also coming from fellow Mercedes-AMG squad Craft-Bamboo Racing on-site.

***Head of Mercedes-AMG Customer Racing Stefan Wendl told Sportscar365: “It’s not the ideal case. The equipment is not the ones they’re used to for Intercontinental GT Challenge. They’re looking for measurement equipment for the car and we’re also in talks with Craft-Bamboo later today that we share equipment or at least let the car come in [to the team’s garage] to set it up.”

***The Suzuka 1000km is celebrating its 50th running this weekend, having been revived last year for its return to the Intercontinental GT Challenge schedule. The first event took place in 1966 and was won by Yukio Fukuzawa and Tomohiko Tsutsumi in a Toyota 2000GT. Since then the race has gone on hiatus twice, once from 1974-79 due to the oil crisis, and then from 2020-24 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

***Porsche is the manufacturer with the most wins of the 49 editions so far, with 11, and will be aiming for a first win since 1994. Toyota and Honda are next up with eight wins each, but neither are represented on this year’s grid. A victory for Nissan, which has seven wins, would draw the marque level with its Japanese rivals.

***To celebrate the 50th edition, a number of iconic cars from various eras of Suzuka 1000km history will be on display on Saturday and Sunday in the fan area. They include a Toyota 7 (1970), a Mazda 787B (1991), a Nissan R92CP (1992) and two Honda SUPER GT machines, an NSX-GT from 2000 and a HSV-010 from 2010.

***Of the 90 drivers registered to take part in the race, 38 are Japanese — around 42 percent of the grid, up from 28 percent last year. A higher proportion of the teams are Japanese too, with 13 home outfits this year versus the ten that took part last year.

***As per last year, Germany is the next-best represented nationality on the grid with eight drivers, followed by the UK and Italy with five each and France with four.

***With BMW not entering a factory-backed car this year, last year’s winning trio of Raffaele Marciello, Kelvin van der Linde and Charles Weerts, are all absent this year. However, there are still three Suzuka 1000km winners participating, with returnee Fred Vervisch (2019) joined by Tsugio Matsuda (2008) and Shigekazu Wakisaka (2002).

***Additionally, two other podium finishers from the race’s SUPER GT era are participating in a GT3 car for the first time: Naoki Hattori, who was part of the Team Kraft Lexus lineup that finished third in 2006, and Joao Paulo de Oliveira, who was twice a third-place finisher in a Team Impul Nissan in 2011 and ’15.

***Augusto Farfus, Dan Harper and Max Hesse, who teamed together in the other Pro class WRT BMW last year that finished sixth overall, are all in separate entries this weekend. Farfus and Hesse are reinforcing Team KRC’s two BMW M4 GT4 EVOs, while Harper is in WRT’s solo customer entry alongside his FIA World Endurance Championship LMGT3 co-drivers Parker Thompson and Anthony McIntosh.

***Harper told Sportscar365: “Suzuka is a very special one. It’s one of my favorite tracks to drive. I think the first sector, going through the Esses, there’s no other section of a race track like that. It’s a cool one.”

***Vervisch, meanwhile, returns to Suzuka for the first time since 2019 when the Belgian was part of WRT’s winning lineup with its Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo alongside Kelvin van der Linde and Dries Vanthoor, which marked Audi’s first international victory in Japan. “We wrote history for Audi back then,” he told Sportscar365. “It was their first and only international victory in Japan. The LMP1 never won there. I remember that well. We had a very fast car back then.”

***Johor Motorsports JMR Corvette driver Scott McLaughlin arrives at Suzuka fresh from winning last weekend’s final round of the NTT IndyCar Series season at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, his first win in the series since 2024, as he gears up for his first start in sports cars since his Rolex 24 at Daytona outing for DXDT Racing.

***JMR has announced a partnership for this weekend’s race with Hong Kong-based model manufacturer Trends Hobby, which will “create a replica collectable model of the team’s Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R in the near future”, per a statement.

***Craft-Bamboo Racing, meanwhile, has unveiled a partnership with the Tokyo Musen taxi firm, whose iconic green-and-yellow colors the livery for its No. 77 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo pays homage to. Sportscar365 understands that the livery was initially intended as a simple tribute, but that the company subsequently contacted the team to propose a formal tie-up, which has resulted in its logos being added to the final design.

***The Hong Kong team already has one victory at Suzuka under its belt this year: it won the five-hour Super Taikyu round in April with Honda factory star Kaku Ohta, who returns to the No. 77 car this weekend, Adderly Fong and Sun Jingzu.

***Prior to heading to Suzuka, Absolute Racing embarked on a tour of several famous locations in Tokyo last weekend with both of its Porsche 911 GT3 R Evos, the Bosch Motorsport-liveried No. 7 car and the No. 8 ‘Bushi Rex’-themed car entered together with AO Racing. The two cars were also put on display at Porsche Studio Ginza for three days.

***Absolute Racing announced on Wednesday the launch of Absolute Auto Group, an “independently operated automotive trading platform” that will focus on high-end, performance and collector vehicles. The Chinese operation named Alejandro Vargas as AAG’s CEO.

***5ZIGEN Nissan driver Katsumasa Chiyo is returning to GT3 competition for the first time this weekend since the 2019 Suzuka 10 Hours, which was part of a full IGTC season he contested with the KCMG team. He shares the No. 500 Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 with fellow Nissan SUPER GT regulars Kazuki Hiramine and Atsushi Miyake.

***Chiyo told Sportscar365: “I’m grateful both to 5ZIGEN for putting together a driver lineup that Nissan fans will love, and to NISMO for creating the chance to compete on the world stage as part of such a lineup. It’s a race where every manufacturer brings strong drivers, so it would be a shame if wasn’t also the case for the Japanese manufacturers, or if there were no top SUPER GT drivers, so I am truly happy to be selected.”

***The 2015 Bathurst 12 Hour winner added: “It’s going to be interesting for me sharing a car with different teammates to usual, and there will be a lot of drivers that I used to race against in Europe and Australia who are active in the GT3 field, so I am also looking forward to racing against them for the first time in a while. In terms of my mindset, the focus is purely on winning, so I intend to give it my absolute all.”

***Herberth Motorsport has entered into an alliance with Seven x Seven Racing for this weekend’s race, with the No. 91 Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo carrying the SUPER GT team’s distinctive yellow-and-black colors. The sister No. 93 car, running under the Ziggo Sport Tempesta Racing banner, is likewise understood to be a Seven x Seven-owned chassis.

***2018 Suzuka 10 Hours winner GruppeM Racing, which also claimed victory in this year’s IGTC season-opening Meguiar’s Bathurst 12 Hour, is notably absent from the grid, with the Hong Kong-flagged team understood to be sitting out the remainder of the year, including the FIA GT World Cup in Macau.

****Wendl told Sportscar365: “We are still in talks with Kenny [Chen]. Let’s see how it goes. Suzuka didn’t work out but maybe we can see them next year again.”

***Track action begins tomorrow with two one-hour paid test sessions followed by a 90-minute night practice session that’s mandatory for all drivers taking part in the race. Support categories Porsche Carrera Cup Japan and SRO Japan Cup, which regularly shares a bill with GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS, will also be on track.

John Dagys contributed to this report