SUPER GT

2024 Season Review: Debut year of the CIVIC TYPE R-GT and a fight for the title to the final race

Honda RACING developed its all-new SuperGT contender based on CIVIC TYPE R, the CIVIC TYPE R-GT, and its 2024 Super GT500 class went down to the wire

2024 Season Review: Debut year of the CIVIC TYPE R-GT and a fight for the title to the final race

Honda RACING developed its all new GT category contender based on CIVIC TYPE R, named the CIVIC TYPE R-GT, and introduced it to the 2024 Super GT500 class. The final tweaks of the car ahead of the season opener, however, were not necessarily a smooth task partially because the regulation was changed to lower the ride height 5mm and thus the new car had to hastily comply. Nevertheless, #100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino), #17 Astemo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi/Kakunoshin Ohta) and #16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Hiroki Otsu/Ren Sato) achieved podium finishes in a row; 3rd place each in the first three rounds of the 2024 season. In the 4th round, CIVIC TYPE R-GT made the 1-2-3 sweep in the official qualifying session, and #8 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Tomoki Nojiri/Nobuharu Matsushita) scored the maiden victory for the new model.

After the 4th round, just before the turnaround point of the season, #100 car (Yamamoto/Makino) sat in 2nd overall with 37-points, and #8 car (Nojiri/Matsushita) followed in 6th with 26-points.



The latter half of the season began with rain

Originally, the latter half of the season was scheduled to begin with the fifth round at Suzuka Circuit, however Typhoon Shanshan's untimely hitting of the Suzuka region forced rescheduling, and the round was postponed until December to be held as the 2024 season closer.

After a rather long summer break, the second half of the season began with the sixth round at Sportsland SUGO. The weekend was punctuated by heavy rainfall and Saturday morning practice sessions were carried out, but as was highly speculated beforehand, qualifying sessions scheduled in the afternoon were all cancelled. This made the race officials decide the starting grid in accordance with the order of the best practice time.

Unfortunately for the CIVIC TYPE R-GT runners, the ever-changing intensity of the rain during the practice sessions, the road surface conditions and traffic at times meant that they started lower than they might otherwise have done, and none were high enough on the grid to really hope for a win.

The race began in full-wet conditions and was gradually getting better, and #17 car (Tsukakoshi/Ohta) had run in 2nd for a while but was relegated later due to a penalty. #100 car finished 5th, the highest among the CIVIC TYPE R-GT entrants.



Suffering from heavy Success Weight

The seventh round at Autopolis also suffered from bad weather as the wet second half of the season continued. Practice sessions on Saturday were entirely cancelled, qualifying sessions were deferred to Sunday morning and the schedule generally didn't run as planned. The #17 car (Tsukakoshi/Ohta) adjusted well to the drying conditions and secured fourth on the grid.

In the race that began in the dry, #17 (Tsukakoshi/Ohta) climbed to 3rd and flew along at a quick pace, until they went off the track after contact with another car and ended up in a premature retirement. #100 car (Yamamoto/Makino) took over third position only to find its Success Weight (SW), as much as 86kg, was too heavy to defend its position, and was forced to surrender to a rival car carrying lesser SW in the final phase of the race and had to accept 4th at the chequered flag.



Front row monopoly at R8

The eighth round, that should have been the season’s final race, was held at Mobility Resort Motegi as a penultimate round of the series. The SW usually nullified on occasion of the final race that has traditionally been held at Motegi was cut by half for this time. Official qualifying sessions at Motegi were again hit by heavy rain, and the #64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Takuya Izawa/Riki Okusa) excelled to capture pole position immediately followed by #8 car (Nojiri/Matsushita) to ensure that the CIVIC TYPE R-GT dominated the front row.

The weather on Sunday turned fine and the race was started under dry conditions. #64 car (Izawa/Okusa) launched from pole position and maintained its position during the early part of the race, but slipped backwards one after another as laps went on. In the meantime, #8 car (Nojiri/Matsushita) kept its original starting position through to the end and finished 2nd, the top finisher in the CIVIC camp. #100 car (Yamamoto/Makino) finished 6th and gained equivalent points to stay on 2nd overall with a 18-point gap from the point leader, and barely preserved its hope for the title until the final race.



Finishing the season second overall

The final race of the season took place at Suzuka Circuit in December. After a second half of the season blighted by rain, the weekend was blessed with a bright day and plenty of sunshine. However, both the ambient and road surface temperatures dropped down suitably for the year-end month which contributed to the race condition entering unknown territory for almost every entrant.

For #100 car (Yamamoto/Makino), winning the final race was an absolute prerequisite in the hunt for the title, and yet, in case the point-leading #36 GR Supra added 2-points or more to the gap between them in the qualifying session, the championship would be settled for #36 car. Indeed the title race was over during qualifying as the #100 car marked the fifth fastest time while #36 car captured pole, and with it the #100 crew's hopes for the title were ultimately ended.

The final race saw each of #17 car (Tsukakoshi/Ohta) and #100 car (Yamamoto/Makino) chasing #36 car whenever possible, but in the end they didn't have quite enough. In the end, #17 car (Tsukakoshi/Ohta) finished 2nd, #100 car (Yamamoto/Makino) and #16 car (Otsu/Sato) 4th and 5th, making for a total of three CIVIC TYPE R-GT cars in the top five. As for the overall results, #100 car (Yamamoto/Makino) ranked 2nd, #8 car (Nojiri/Matsushita) 9th, #17 car (Tsukakoshi/Ohta) 10th, #16 car (Otsu/Sato) 12th and #64 car (Izawa/Okusa) 13th, each one of Honda crews concluding a fruitful first season with the all new CIVIC TYPE R-GT outfit, but knowing that there is the promise of more next season.


Masahiro Saiki
Masahiro Saiki
We have introduced the all-new model, the CIVIC TYPE R-GT, from the 2024 season, however the opening round came well before we fully completed the final tweaks for the opening round because we had to work for the new car development and for the revised higher ride-height regulation at the same time. Nevertheless, I think we could make the innate potential of CIVIC TYPE R-GT perform at a high level.  The first win at round four, the front row monopoly at round eight and so on, for example, all demonstrate strong performance. Having said that, if I look over the season as a whole, I feel the new cars have not yet been used at the very best and also the teams weren’t able to run the race in a regular manner, which is partly because of the disruption from the unfavourable weather conditions. Although the championship series didn’t entirely come our way, we’re able to collect the data useful for the next season thanks much to the performance by #100 car that fought for the title all the way to the end. We will further develop the car for the 2025 season and try our best to have all the CIVIC TYPE R-GT entrants compete in the top ranks in the field. We sincerely appreciate our fans for your continuous support.