Baguette Concedes Title Hopes Over as Toyota Still “Far Ahead”

Bertrand Baguette has conceded that Team Impul’s SUPER GT championship hopes are “over” for this season, saying that Toyota remains “far ahead” of Nissan in terms of competitiveness despite the latter’s breakthrough Suzuka victory.

Together with his co-driver in the No. 12 Nissan Z NISMO, Kazuki Hiramine, Baguette suffered his worst classified finish of the season in last month’s fifth round of the season at Suzuka, slumping to eighth place from fifth on the grid.

That was despite Nissan scoring its first win of the season with the works No. 23 car, marking a rare occasion that Impul did not lead the marque’s charge.

It has left Baguette and Hiramine with a daunting 31-point deficit to TOM’S Toyota drivers Sho Tsuboi and Kenta Yamashita heading into this weekend’s Sugo round.

Looking back on the events of Suzuka, Baguette bemoaned the full-course yellow period that allowed the Cerumo Toyota to pass for fifth, after which Hiramine would lose a further two positions as he struggled with tire degradation.

“It was frustrating,” Baguette told Sportscar365. “Our qualifying was not bad considering the success weight [49 kg]; I thought we had a good chance in the race as it’s usually our strong point. We didn’t expect to be that bad to be honest.

“Ten laps to the end, there was a miscommunication on the restart of the FCY, which cost us one position to Cerumo, and maybe if we kept them behind there, they would have never have overtaken us. Then we had quite big degradation on the front tire.

“We didn’t have the pace at all. I don’t remember the last time we had such a bad race, losing positions towards the end. 

“We have a new engineer [Takuji Murata] this year and we are running a very different setup concept, and it was our first time at Suzuka with this concept. It worked in qualifying, but not so well in the race.”

Despite the fact the Impul Nissan will carry a nominal 55 kg of ballast at Sugo, including a stage one fuel flow restrictor, Baguette is confident that the team’s lack of race pace at Suzuka shouldn’t be an issue again this weekend.

However, the Belgian driver says the focus is squarely on trying to win a race for the first time since 2022 rather than trying to claw back lost ground in the title race.

“Our setup concept should work really well at Sugo,” Baguette said. “The fuel flow restrictor is not so important and we are carrying less physical weight. I think we will have our cards to play, so we have to target a good result.

“Last year the No. 23 was really fast at Autopolis and they should have won the race. So that’s two tracks where it should be possible to challenge Toyota.

“At Motegi, there will be no success weight, so it might be difficult. But the next two tracks are chances to do a good result and possibly get a win again.

“We didn’t win a race since 2022 with Impul. So the target is to win one of the last three races. The championship is over. To recover the gap to TOM’S is impossible.”

Baguette said that the Suzuka win scored by NISMO duo Katsumasa Chiyo and Mitsunori Takaboshi does not change his perception of Nissan’s competitive position, pointing to the fact that the Rookie Racing Toyota finished second with a 67 kg handicap.

“We know we are not in front and we have a lot of work to do to catch up,” he said. “They are still far ahead. The Rookie car was not far from winning again at Suzuka. Their race pace was impressive, just they had too much weight in qualifying.

“It looks like Toyota has the upper hand on engine power, consumption… they are really strong. If we do all the races at 0 kg [ballast] for sure they will win every race.”