Honda’s Prelude Fastest As Field Gathers Early at Okayama

Honda’s new HRC Prelude-GT topped the timesheets as the majority of GT500 teams gathered at Okayama International Circuit early for an additional day of testing ahead of this weekend’s first official SUPER GT test at the same venue.

Koudai Tsukakoshi set the day’s fastest time of 1:16.698 aboard the No. 17 Real Racing Honda during the second of two 90-minute sessions on Wednesday.

That was enough to surpass the benchmark set by Kenta Yamashita in the No. 36 TOM’S Toyota GR Supra from the opening session by 0.350 seconds, although it was slower than the best time set during makers’ testing at Okayama in February.

The only other car of the ten GT500s present to dip below 1:17 was the SARD Toyota of Sacha Fenestraz, who set a 1:16.945 to go second in the morning and third overall.

Cerumo’s Toyota was next up in the hands of Toshiki Oyu with a best of 1:17.050.

Nissan had only one of its three Z NISMOs participating in the test, the Kondo Racing car, which was second in the afternoon and fifth overall with Teppei Natori driving.

The two remaining Toyotas, the No. 37 TOM’S car and the Rookie Racing machine, were next up, followed by the remaining three Honda Preludes, the Team Kunimitsu car, the No. 16 ARTA machine and the Dunlop-shod Nakajima Racing car.

It marked the No. 37 TOM’S car’s first test appearance since January’s opening test of the winter at Sepang, with the remaining Bridgestone-shod cars all using up the hours deducted from their totals from February’s Okayama test being impacted by rain.

Nakajima Racing meanwhile has a higher limit on the number of off-season testing hours it can conduct as part of concessions granted to Dunlop and Yokohama.

However, Yokohama’s sole GT500 runner, the Racing Project Bandoh Toyota, has not taken advantage of this opportunity, allegedly owing to a lack of new products to test, and will not appear on-track until the first official session on Friday.

Both the Real and Kunimitsu Hondas were running in full livery for the first time at Okayama, the latter team having released an official render of its design on Wednesday (pictured top), as well as the Cerumo Toyota (below).

In addition to GT500 testing, three one-hour so-called ‘special sports driving’ sessions were also held at Okayama on Wednesday, featuring 13 of this year’s 29 GT300 entries.

The LM Corsa Lexus LC500h GT was quickest in two of those sessions, setting a fastest time of 1:24.361, while second was the new Rookie Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo on a 1:24.793. K-tunes Racing’s Lexus RC F GT3 was third on a 1:25.074.

Also in action were all three Ferrari teams, Velorex, CarGuy MKS Racing and PONOS Racing, the Mercedes-AMG of Team UpGarage, the Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3s of Kondo Racing and Helm Motorsports, JLOC’s No. 88 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2, the Subaru BRZ, the Shade Racing Lexus and the Inging Toyota GR86 GT.

Official testing commences on Friday with the first of the day’s two-hour sessions starting at 9:30 a.m. local time (Thursday 7:30 p.m. ET), with both the GT500 and GT300 classes sharing the track and all 43 cars entered for the full season set to appear.

However, only Saturday’s second day of action will be open to paying spectators.