Suzuka 1000km Entry Reaches 33 Cars; Drivers Revealed

An updated entry list for the Suzuka 1000km has been revealed, with a number of late additions boosting the grid to 33 cars for the Intercontinental GT Challenge fixture.

Published on Monday, the revised list reveals drivers for all 33 entries and which class each car will compete in for the revived Japanese enduro on Sept. 12-14.

The most significant change from the provisional entry revealed last month is the arrival of an additional two BMW M4 GT3 EVOs for Team WRT, as revealed last week by the German marque that will now be represented by three cars in total.

Additionally, SRO Japan Cup regulars K-tunes Racing and Tomei Sports (listed as ‘Runup Sports’) have pledged single entries each.

K-tunes brings the number of Ferrari 296 GT3s on the grid to five, while the Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 contingent is up to three cars with the additional entry from Tomei.

Porsche remains the most prolific manufacturer with 11 cars, unchanged from before, followed by Mercedes-AMG with seven, with a trio of Corvettes (including one older Callaway-built car), and a single Audi making up the remainder of the entry.

Lamborghini is no longer represented with Absolute Racing switching its second entry to Porsche, reducing the number of manufacturers on the grid to seven.

The extra Porsche is balanced out by Herberth Motorsport scaling back to a single car.

Of the 33 cars on the grid, the Bronze class features the largest amount of entries with 12, followed by the Pro division with 11. The Pro-Am, Silver and Am divisions meanwhile feature six, three and one cars respectively.

The entry list reveals a number of driver lineups that were previously not announced, most notably including the two Pro Mercedes-AMG lineups belonging to the Craft-Bamboo Racing and GruppeM Racing teams.

Sharing Craft-Bamboo’s No. 77 entry will be factory Honda driver Kaku Ohta, who also drove for the team in the Fuji 24 Hours, Maxi Goetz and Ralf Aron, while Mikael Grenier, Maxime Martin and Luca Stolz will drive GruppeM’s No. 888 car.

EBM Giga Racing, meanwhile, will have Bronze-ranked Adrian D’Silva, Harry King and Sven Mueller sharing its Pro class-entered No. 61 Porsche 911 GT3 R.

Elsewhere, the Bronze class features a number of noteworthy lineups, including the No. 10 Absolute Porsche that will be driven by Antares Au, Loek Hartog and FIA World Endurance Championship star Richard Lietz.

Harmony Racing has recruited Dustin Blattner and Dennis Marschall to join Lorenzo Patrese in its No. 21 Ferrari, while Ian James, Zacharie Robichon and Alex Riberas form the lineup for the Heart of Racing by SPS Mercedes-AMG.

Kenny Habul’s 75 Express Mercedes-AMG team has signed Dominik Baumann and Yannick Mettler to share driving duties with IGTC regular Habul.

In the Pro-Am class, factory Lexus driver Ben Barnicoat joins Craft-Bamboo Racing’s No. 28 Mercedes-AMG alongside Hong Kong duo Jonathan Hui and Kevin Tse.

BMW, Ferrari, Mercedes-AMG and Porsche will all be vying for IGTC points at Suzuka, with BMW currently leading the standings by 14 points from Porsche.

Augusto Farfus leads the drivers’ title race by two points from Kelvin van der Linde, with Raffaele Marciello a further five points behind. Porsche’s Alessio Picariello is the highest-placed non-BMW driver in the standings.

On-track action for the Suzuka 1000km begins with a pair of paid tests and night practice on Friday Sept. 12, ahead of pre-qualifying and qualifying proper on Saturday Sept. 13.

The race is due to begin at 12:50 p.m. local time on Sunday Sept. 14 and has a maximum duration of six-and-a-half hours for the titular 1000km distance to be reached.