Fenestraz Expecting SARD Upturn After Strong Winter

Sacha Fenestraz believes the SARD Toyota team has “more potential” in SUPER GT this year following a positive off-season, and hopes that a tire selection “gamble” for this weekend’s Okayama opener pays off.

The Argentine driver is going into his second season in the Japanese championship pairing up with Yuhi Sekiguchi aboard the No. 39 Toyota GR Supra, which has figured towards the top of the timesheets for much of winter testing.

Fenestraz set the fourth-fastest time in last month’s first official test at Okayama, and was the nearest rival to the all-conquering No. 36 TOM’S Toyota in the second and final official test at Fuji Speedway.

Looking ahead to this weekend’s 300km curtain-raiser, Fenestraz believes that SARD has made a step forward compared to last year in terms of performance having made an important discovery regarding certain parts that weren’t working as expected.

“I do think we have good potential this year, more than last year,” Fenestraz told Sportscar365. “We have done a lot of testing and we’ve found some interesting things that have really improved the performance.

“Something we were fighting most of last season, we managed to solve a few tests ago.

“I cannot say much about it; it was not something broken, but it was something that made us question why we had certain car behavior even when we ran a similar set-up to car No. 36 or No. 37. Now we changed some things, and the pace is better.

“We’ll see; 70 percent of the job is choosing the right tires and we are the only [Bridgestone] Toyota this weekend that selected different tires. It’s a gamble, but we believe the performance will be on that side and our choice was correct.

“It should be hot, the weather should be good on both days, which we hope is good for us. But we’ll only know if we were right after qualifying and especially during the race.”

Fenestraz and Sekiguchi placed fifth overall last year with podium finishes in the opening round at Okayama and at Sugo, narrowly missing a win at the latter circuit, but were unable to match the consistency of TOM’S duo Sho Tsuboi and Kenta Yamashita, who romped to the team’s third straight title.

While admitting that beating TOM’S will be a tall order, Fenestraz hopes to have fewer ups and downs compared to a 2025 campaign impacted by penalties and occasional poor showings in qualifying.

“I want to be realistic,” said Fenestraz. “We are a small team, it’s tricky for us against big teams like TOM’S that have two cars and double the data, so I don’t want to say we’ll definitely fight for the championship.

“But I think compared to last year, we can be more up the front and more consistent.

“Okayama is generally a good track for SARD, but we need to do a better job in qualifying than we did last year, because last year we qualified last.”

Fenestraz added that this year’s Sepang race being unlikely to go ahead, which could result in the 2026 calendar being cut to seven races, only heightens the importance of improving the team’s consistency.

“It’s a shame that Sepang might be cancelled, because it was a strong track for us last year,” said Fenestraz. “Without Yuhi’s mistake when he hit the No. 36 on lap one, I think we could have finished at least on the podium.

“If we have one less race this season, then we cannot afford any mistakes, starting this weekend.

“Last year we made a good comeback [at Okayama] to finish P3 on a drying track after a terrible qualifying, but we can’t allow ourselves to have these kind of things this year, especially if we have one less race.”