Sakaguchi Keeps Toyota Pole Streak Alive in Sepang

Racing Project Bandoh’s Sena Sakaguchi stormed to pole position for this weekend’s Sepang SUPER GT round, keeping up Toyota’s perfect qualifying record this year.

Sakaguchi posted a 1:49.748 at the end of the Q2 pole shootout to take the top spot in the No. 19 Toyota GR Supra that he shares with Yuji Kunimoto.

That was enough to grab the top spot by a margin of 0.602 seconds over Tomoki Nojiri aboard the No. 8 ARTA Honda Civic Type R-GT.

As well as Toyota’s third pole in three races so far in 2025, it also marked the WedsSport-backed Bandoh squad’s first pole since the Sugo round in 2022, and a first for Yokohama tires since last year’s Autopolis event.

Takuya Izawa made it three different tire makers in the top three in the Dunlop-equipped Nakajima Honda, just 0.038 seconds behind Nojiri’s Bridgestone-shod car.

Giuliano Alesi was fourth-fastest in the No. 37 TOM’S Toyota, ahead of the best of the Nissan Z NISMOs, the No. 3 works machine driven in Q2 by Daiki Sasaki.

The Impul Nissan was the only other of the brand’s cars to clear Q1 and wound up sixth with Kazuki Hiramine at the wheel.

There was drama early in Q2 as Sacha Fenestraz was forced to park up the SARD Toyota, which had been fastest in Friday morning practice, with an apparent engine fire as smoke bellowed from the No. 39’s side exhaust.

While the fire was quickly controlled, with Fenestraz emerging unharmed, it leaves the SARD car 10th on the grid and likely to take a fresh engine for the race — although this can be taken without penalty as teams can use two units per season.

The championship-leading No. 1 TOM’S Toyota, which is carrying a stage-two fuel flow restrictor, managed to qualify eighth as Sho Tsuboi scraped through Q1 in 10th place before Kenta Yamashita took over at the wheel for Q2.

The Team Kunimitsu Honda that had paced first practice on Thursday was a surprise Q1 dropout, with Naoki Yamamoto only managing 11th.

Honda Junior Nomura Takes UpGarage Pole

Yuto Nomura took pole in GT300 at the wheel of the Team UpGarage Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, marking the team’s first pole since switching away from Honda machinery.

Honda junior driver Nomura, who paced second practice, set a time of 2:02.110 in the car he shares with Takashi Kobayashi, beating the Saitama Green Brave Toyota GR Supra GT of Hiroki Yoshida by 0.365 seconds.

JLOC’s pair of Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2s locked out the second row, with Natsu Sakaguchi in the No. 87 car outpacing Takashi Kogure in the No. 0 machine.

Subaru’s works BRZ, fresh with a new engine after its dramatic last-lap failure in last month’s Fuji race, was fifth-fastest.

EBM’s two wildcard entries will start from 11th and 17th on the grid respectively.

Porsche Motorsport Asia-Pacific selected driver Dorian Boccolacci backed up his practice pace by topping his Q1 group with a time of 2:02.653 in the No. 611 Porsche 911 GT3 R, but his co-driver Adrian D’Silva didn’t set a lap time in Q2.

Kerong Li meanwhile was ninth and slowest in his Q1 group at the wheel of the No. 333 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo, denying Jazeman Jaafar a chance to qualify.

Both cars moved up a spot on the grid when the PONOS Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 was thrown out of qualifying for a turbo boost pressure violation.

Saturday’s race is slated to begin at 4:30 p.m. local time (4:30 a.m. EDT).

RESULTS: GT500/GT300