June 1 (Sat) - 2 (Sun) — The third round of the 2024 SUPER GT series specially named as “SUZUKA GT 3Hours Race” was held at Suzuka Circuit (Mie Pref.) and five CIVIC TYPE R-GT cars and a NSX-GT3 car participated in each of the GT500 and GT300 class. As same as the previous event (R2), this one, R3 of the season, was run on a “3-hour” time-oriented format.

Suzuka on June 1 (Sat) was greeted by the clear morning sky and the bright sun burned down on the entire circuit. The CIVIC TYPE R-GT squadron hustling on the home soil marked top times right from the morning practice session, and looked perfectly ready for the afternoon qualifying sessions.

The Q1 session started at 3:33 p.m. saw #8 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Nobuharu Matsushita) clocked the 2nd best time, on down, #17 Astemo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Kakunoshin Ohta) 3rd, #16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Ren Sato) 4th, #100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Naoki Yamamoto) 6th and #64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Riki Okusa) 7th, all five Honda GT500 entrants made way to Q2 with prosperous times.

The Q2 started at 4:29 p.m., and in the 10-minute session, #17 Astemo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi) nullified the fine effort in Q1 by the spin and ended up in a lowly 15th grid. On the other hand, another CIVIC TYPE R-GT division carrying lighter success weights performed correspondingly well: #16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Hiroki Otsu) and #8 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Tomoki Nojiri) marked 2nd and 4th fastest (aggregated) time with #100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Tadasuke Makino) and #64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Takuya Izawa) following in 10th and 13th respectively.

On June 2 (Sun), the drizzling clouds in the morning gradually scattered and at 1:30 p.m., as the formation lap was started, the sun came out from the patchy blue sky. There were small puddles still remained at places on the track where all runners shod with dry tires, lined up at the starting grid and waited for the green signal.

As the red lights went off, #16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Otsu) off from the 2nd grid hung on doggedly to the pole sitter (#37 GR Supra), but was pulled away little by little thereafter, then worse still, slid down to 3rd on Lap-5 after being chased hard and finally passed by #14 car. Later on Lap-24, Otsu headed for the pit and handed the car over to Sato after tire change and refueling. Sato got back into the race resuming the same virtual 3rd position and resolutely began his stint.

#8 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Matsushita) came into the pit after running 32 laps in 4th, and switched to Nojiri. Refueling and tire change were duly done, but unfortunately slowed down on Lap-44 due to a drive train failure, and returned to the pit only to decide early retirement.

#16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Sato) accumulated laps maintaining the 3rd position, made its second stop on Lap-60, and transferred to Otsu who returned the race in 3rd as well. On Lap-69, a drive-through penalty was given to the race leader, #14 car (GR Supra), and thus #16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Otsu) was automatically raised to 2nd albeit just for a while. As indeed, #14 car soon made good the penalty loss, closing in on #16 car and overtook it at Hitachi Astemo Chicane on Lap-78.

#16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Otsu) went on to finish the race in 3rd at least, however, the progress of tire wear suddenly became crucial at around 30-minutes to go. While the acute degradation of tires forced tangible pace down, Otsu doggedly accumulated lap after lap, and defended the 3rd position with 0.530-sec gap from the immediate pursuer.

In the meantime, #17 Astemo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Tsukakoshi/Ohta) departing from 15th grid has been going on a high pace and steadily made up positions. At some point, #17 car caught up with #100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Yamamoto/Makino), passed it to inherit its 6th position, and finished the race in that position. Yamamoto/Makino duo also got their share of points, achieving 3-straight point finishes from the opening round.