Honda’s Otsu Takes Blame for Okayama Qualifying Crash

Honda driver Hiroki Otsu has held himself responsible for the qualifying crash that will mean the HRC-backed No. 8 ARTA Prelude-GT starts from the back of the grid for Sunday’s opening round of the new SUPER GT season at Okayama.

Otsu escaped uninjured from the crash that occurred in Q1 on Saturday as he appeared to lose control over a bump at the penultimate corner, which sent him out on to the gravel and into the barriers head-on at the final corner.

The car that Otsu shares with SUPER GT returnee Kaku Ohta, which has taken on semi-works HRC status this year, is expected to be repaired in time for Sunday’s 300km race, but faces an uphill task recovering from 14th and last on the grid.

“It wasn’t like I was attacking particularly hard, I wasn’t on the kerbs or anything,” Otsu told Sportscar365 when asked about the incident.

“As you could tell from the pictures, the behavior of the car when I hit the bump was quite severe, and it was only to begin with that I could control it. Once it had ‘jumped’, there was nothing more I could do and the car didn’t move as I expected.

“Ultimately, it was my mistake. There were things I could have anticipated better. I feel like that’s something I have to work on more as a driver.

“I’m sorry to the team for giving them more work to do. The damage is significant, but the team says it’s fixable. They are working hard to repair it, and I think we have the pace to catch up in the race, so we’ll give it our all tomorrow.”

Honda GT500 project leader Tomohiro Onishi told reporters post-qualifying that he expects the No. 8 car to be repaired with the available spare parts on-site, while also clarifying that the engine itself remains in a usable state.

Explaining further the circumstances behind the crash, Onishi said: “Among the Honda teams there are various set-up differences and ways of attacking.

“It’s hard to say for certain at this stage, but we know that particular corner at Okayama has its own characteristics [with regards to bumps], and the fact that our car is still in the process of being perfected in terms of set-up means that the drivers could end up going a little over the limit, so I think that might have also had some impact.”

P4 On Grid the “Minimum Target” for Prelude’s Debut

Honda will go into its first race with the Prelude-GT with its best car starting fourth, as Koudai Tsukakoshi led the brand in Q2 at the wheel of the No. 17 Real Racing car.

Ren Sato qualified the No. 16 ARTA car sixth, two places ahead of Tadasuke Makino in the No. 100 Team Kunimitsu car, while GT500 rookie Igor Fraga put the Dunlop-shod Nakajima car 12th on the grid after dropping out in Q1.

Looking back on Honda’s first qualifying session with the Prelude-GT, Onishi said he knew besting Toyota around a circuit it has traditionally been dominant was going to be difficult, but expressed satisfaction with the progress made since testing.

“We weren’t able to get amongst the top three Toyotas today, but we have the No. 17 car starting immediately behind, which I think is a result of Real Racing doing a good job so far this weekend both in terms of set-up and driving,” he said.

“We expected that it would be difficult to beat Toyota here, but the margins are quite tight and we have most of our cars in the pack immediately behind.

“Of course, we can’t say we are fully satisfied unless we were able to get pole position and have all five cars towards the top of the order, but looking at the results of the tests during the off-season, we knew it wouldn’t be that easy.

“In the official Okayama test, during qualifying simulations it looked as if we were about six tenths away from the top, and I think we have been able to extract more potential from the car today than we were able to at that time.

“It feels like we achieved the minimum target today.

“At one point we were expecting that we would be filling out the bottom positions, but we have been working hard, including in last month’s Fuji test, to avoid that.

“At the same time we have to accept we still have some way to go to reach the top.”