Suzuka Thursday Notebook

***An update to the entry list for this weekend’s Suzuka 1000km was issued on Monday, featuring only one driver change, as Yusaku Shibata replaces Takuya Otaki aboard the No. 360 Runup Sports Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3. It means the Tomei Sports-run car moves to the Am class, which is now up to two cars, while the Pro-Am division that the No. 360 had been registered for drops to five cars. Click Here to view the latest entry list.

***Unsurprisingly, Japan is the best-represented nation on the entry list for the revived Intercontinental GT Challenge round with 28 drivers. Germany is next up with ten drivers, ahead of China on eight and the U.K. and the U.S., which have five apiece.

***There are only three past winners of the Suzuka 1000km and its variants on the entry. Kelvin van der Linde was part of Team WRT’s 2019 Suzuka 10 Hours-winning lineup, while Raffaele Marciello triumphed the previous year with GruppeM. Shigekazu Wakisaka meanwhile was part of the winning lineups in both 2001 and ’02 for Toyota GT500 teams Cerumo and Team LeMans respectively.

***Twenty-six of the 33 cars on the grid represent IGTC’s four registered manufacturers: BMW, Ferrari, Mercedes-AMG and Porsche.

***With two rounds to go, BMW heads into weekend with a 14-point lead over Porsche in the IGTC manufacturers’ standings. The Bavarian brand could mathematically clinch the title this weekend if its two Pro and one Bronze entry increase that advantage to 44 points, one more than the maximum available in the season finale at Indianapolis.

***The top five positions in the IGTC drivers’ championship, meanwhile, are all BMW drivers, headed by Augusto Farfus, who claimed pole at Suzuka in 2019 and will share the No. 31 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO with Dan Harper and Max Hesse, both of whom are not in points contention.

***Van der Linde, who sits second in the standings, trailing Farfus by two points, spearheads the sister No. 32 entry with Marciello and defending IGTC champion Charles Weerts, who are third and sixth, respectively, in the drivers’ standings.

***Farfus told Sportscar365 he plans to approach Suzuka as a “one-off race” despite his IGTC points lead. “We will at some point check the situation in the championship, but I want to maximize whatever result we can,” said the Brazilian. “And in case we go to Indy, I will do the same there as well. I will race as I always race.”

***With fourth-placed Jesse Krohn and fifth-placed Sheldon van der Linde not participating this weekend, their IGTC title chances are effectively over.

***Alessio Picarello, who is coming off maximum points with his second-place finish at the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa, is the best-placed non-BMW driver in the standings, albeit 29 points behind Farfus. The Belgian driver is in the No. 6 Origine Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R alongside Laurin Heinrich and Bastian Buus this weekend.

***Suzuka has attracted a record number of drivers nominated to score IGTC Independent Cup points: Antares Au, Adrian D’Silva and Jonathan Hui join Ralf Bohn and Kenny Habul, who are both tied for the lead on 25 points apiece.

***Habul makes his first IGTC start since his third place overall finish in the season-opening Meguiar’s Bathurst 12 Hour, in a 75 Express-run Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo the U.S.-based Australian owner/driver shared with Jules Gounon and Luca Stolz. Gounon, like a number of top-level drivers, is on DTM duty this weekend at the Red Bull Ring, while Stolz is part of GruppeM’s Pro class lineup.

***The No. 75 SunEnergy1-sponsored entry, which is competing in the Bronze Cup class this weekend, therefore sees a reprisal of two of its drivers from the 2023 IGTC season, Dominik Baumann, who drove at the season-ending Gulf 12 Hours and Silver-rated Yannick Mettler, who was part of the team’s Pro-Am winning lineup in the Kyalami 9 Hour.

***Mercedes-AMG head of customer racing Stefan Wendl told Sportscar365 that Gounon as well as his fellow DTM stars Lucas Auer and Maro Engel would have almost certainly been part of the brand’s Suzuka roster if not for the DTM clash.

***Wendl said: “For them it’s a shame. But I think our roster is wide enough that we will have enough drivers on the same level, especially at Suzuka. Most of them have experience of Suzuka from either GT World Challenge or previous [IGTC] races at Suzuka. Maxi [Goetz] was on the podium [in 2018]. Clashes happen, but we can live with it.”

***The new-for-2025 Pirelli DHG tire will be used by GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS teams for only the third time this weekend at Suzuka, with the new rubber having only made its first appearance in the series in July’s Fuji round.

***Additionally, most of the field will be tackling Suzuka for the first time since the track was partially resurfaced last winter. The new tarmac runs from the final chicane and through the entire first sector until just after the turn formerly known as Dunlop Curve (Turn 7). The rest of the circuit is scheduled to be resurfaced at the end of the year.

***Factory Corvette driver Alexander Sims, who is part of the No. 2 JMR Corvette lineup together with Scott McLaughlin and Nicky Catsburg, says he is looking forward to tackling Suzuka for the first time in his career. “Racing at Suzuka will be a career highlight of mine,” said the Briton. “I’ve wanted to do it for a while. Having been at the go-kart circuit when I was 15 and not back since, it will be very cool to race on the big track.”

***B-Max Racing, which operates the Team Handwork Challenge Nissan, is coming to Suzuka fresh off wrapping up the Super Formula Lights title with a round to spare with Honda junior driver Yuto Nomura, who also competes in SUPER GT.

***Goodsmile Racing’s Mercedes-AMG chassis is the same one that it uses in SUPER GT. It makes the team the only one in the field to take advantage of the agreement between the SRO and the GTA revealed last year that allows teams competing in the GT300 class of the Japanese series to use the same chassis in the Suzuka 1000km.

***Team LeMans is among the GT300 teams known to have weighed up a Suzuka 1000km effort only to finally decide against. In a statement given to Sportscar365, the decision was put down to “a combination of various factors: budget, schedule, drivers as well as availability of team staff.” However, the team is still present at Suzuka supporting the Norik Racing Ferrari effort in the supporting SRO Japan Cup races this weekend.

***A total of 19 cars, including 14 GT3s, are on the entry list for the Japan Cup. Five teams are on double duty across both the Suzuka 1000km and Japan Cup events: Bingo Racing, PONOS Racing, K-tunes Racing, Runup Sports and Maezawa Racing.

***While a number of drivers are tackling both the Suzuka 1000km and the Japan Cup races, Yuya Motojima is notably doing so for two different teams, as he tackles the 1000km with the Team 5ZIGEN Nissan team before switching to his regular Max Racing Mercedes-AMG squad for the Japan Cup.

***Bingo Sports pair Ukyo Sasahara and Shinji Takei will defend a narrow four-point advantage heading into Saturday’s opening Japan Cup race over Team Hitotsuyama drivers Akihiro Tsuzuki and Shintaro Kawabata. Also still in title contention is Seven x Seven Racing’s ‘Bankcy’, a further two points back.

***PONOS arrives at Suzuka off the back of victory in last month’s sixth Japan Cup race at Okayama, where it declined to take part in the podium presentation. This followed the organizers’ decision not to allow the team’s Ferrari to take to the track for the final part of Saturday’s race after a technical issue forced it into the garage after the formation lap. A statement issued by the team called its decision to skip the podium an “act of protest against what we believe was a fundamental lapse in fairness, rule application, and operational consistency in race management”. The full statement can be read here.

***Suzuka 1000km track action begins on Friday with a pair of hour-long paid practice sessions, starting at 9:40 a.m. and 12 p.m. local time (Thursday 8:40 p.m. and 11 p.m. EST). A 90-minute night practice session follows at 5:45 p.m local time (4:45 a.m. EST).

John Dagys contributed to this report