Final Suzuka Grid Confirmed After Raft of Penalties

The starting grid for Sunday’s Suzuka 1000km round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge has been confirmed after a raft of penalties that shook up the qualifying order.

Miedecke Motorsport/Team MPC’s Ford Mustang GT3 EVO will lead the 30-car field to green after Christopher Mies, Frederic Vervisch and Dennis Olsen set the second-best average time in Saturday evening’s three-part qualifying session.

That was already enough for pole, given the three-place grid penalty incurred by the car that topped the timesheets, the No. 77 Craft-Bamboo Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo shared by Kaku Ohta, Maxime Martin and Luca Stolz, which was then subsequently found to have been underweight and had its lap times deleted.

With the No. 77 car dropping to the back of the field and some of the other top runners from qualifying taking grid drops, the No. 45 PONOS Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo of Tadasuke Makino, Seita Nonaka and Takuro Shinohara is elevated to second.

The second row will be shared by Absolute Racing’s No. 7 Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo (Ayhancan Guven/Dorian Boccolacci/Alessandro Ghiretti) and Team KRC’s No. 89 BMW M4 GT3 EVO (Maxime Oosten/Max Hesse/Tony Ruan) that topped the Bronze class.

Starting fifth will be the 5ZIGEN Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 (Katsumasa Chiyo/Atsushi Miyake/Kazuki Hiramine) ahead of the No. 8 ‘Bushi Rex’-themed Absolute Porsche (Laurin Heinrich/Alessio Picariello/Julien Andlauer) that took a two-place grid drop.

Completing the top ten are the No. 80 LM Corsa Ferrari, the 75 Express Mercedes-AMG that was demoted three places, the High Class Racing Porsche and the No. 2 Johor Motorsports JMR Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R that also drops three places.

The Team WRT BMW, which took the largest grid drop after being demoted five places for speeding under red flags, will take the start from 11th place.

Craft-Bamboo’s No. 77 car will take the start from 28th on the grid, with the remaining competitors, the No. 18 Porsche Centre Okazaki car and the No. 360 Tomei Sports Nissan, both being permitted to take the start from the pit lane.

The No. 18 Porsche was given an overnight engine change after Hibiki Taira stopped on track in Q2, while the No. 360 Nissan has been rebuilt around a fresh monocoque and will complete a single hardship lap ahead of the start of the race.

The 50th running of the Suzuka 1000km remains set to get underway on schedule at 12:50 p.m. local time (Saturday 11:50 p.m. EST), despite a delay to the SRO Japan Cup support race due to a red flag in difficult weather conditions.