The sixth round of the 2025 Super GT series was held at Suportsland SUGO (Miyagi Pref.) on September 20 (Sat) - 21 (Sun), and a total of five CIVIC TYPE R-GT cars participated in the event also named as “SUGO GT 300KM RACE”. The race was eventually turned into a time competition after a sizeable accident that caused a lengthy Red Flag period to clear the aftermath. A total of four CIVIC TYPE R-GT cars, including the above-mentioned third-place, finished in the top-10 classification earning championship points.

The following entrants entered the sixth round from the Honda camp:

#8 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Tomoki Nojiri/Nobuharu Matsushita)

#16 ARTA MUGEN CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Hiroki Otsu/Ren Sato)

#17 Astemo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Koudai Tsukakoshi/Syun Koide)

#64 Modulo CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Takuya Izawa/Riki Okusa)

#100 STANLEY CIVIC TYPE R-GT (Naoki Yamamoto/Tadasuke Makino)

In the wake of overnight rain, the free practice session on Saturday morning stayed semi-wet, however the official qualifying sessions in the afternoon were carried out under ‘Dry’ conditions. #16 Ren Sato, who had made way to Q2, took a back-to-back pole position. #17 car took 8th on the grid, followed by #8 car 11th, #64 car 13th. The #100 car, the current points leader among the CIVIC entrants, had to abort its time attack due to some failures in the control system, and thus ended up in the bottom grid of the GT500 class.

On Sunday, at 1:40 p.m., the formation lap started under cloudy skies, about 10 minutes behind the prescribed schedule. #16 Otsu launched from pole position to maintain the top slot but was chased hard by #39 GR Supra right behind. Later on Lap-6, Otsu surrendered his position to #39 car on the straight, and on Lap-14, lost another position to #24 Z NISMO to fall back to 3rd.

In the meantime, #17 Koide, #8 Nojiri and #64 Izawa moved up to 6th, 7th and 8th each from the 8th, 11th and 13th grid. On Lap-15, the CIVIC trio sequentially overtook #1 GR Supra to climb to 5-6-7 positions respectively.

As the air temperature on the race day was significantly cooler than expected compared to Saturday, many teams including Koide and Nojiri chose to stop for fresh tyres as soon as the pit-in embargo was lifted on Lap-28. On the other hand, #100 Yamamoto, who had started the race from the rear of the grid, decided to delay his stop until Lap-43. When all entrants completed the stop, #39 car was running at the top, #17 Tsukakoshi was moving up to 2nd, and #64 Okusa was in 4th behind #24 car, then #16 Sato 5th, #8 Matsushita 7th, and #100 Makino came up to 9th after his stop, which meant that all the CIVIC TYPE R-GT cars were so far in the points-scoring positions. On Lap-48, two GT300 cars touched each other at the exit from the last corner, and one of them getting out of control shoved #64 Okusa into the tyre barrier at the entrance of the home straight, which resulted in a huge multiple crash. Okusa was lucky enough to get out of the cockpit, however, the race was red-flagged on Lap-50.

After an hour stoppage to remove the wreckage of the accident, the Safety Car (SC) began leading the pack on Lap-52 to resume the race which was now held as a 30-minute time format. The SC pulled out on Lap-55, and the action restarted only to see yet another FCY for the third time in a day, before racing got underway again for a 14.5-minute final showdown.

Tsukakoshi chased hard for the leading #39 car but was soon caught up by #24 car which was slightly better on pace, and finally surrendered its position on Lap-60. From then on, Tsukakoshi was joined by #16 Sato and #8 Matsushita, and the CIVIC trio followed the top two runners who were not very much far ahead. The race originally configured for 84 laps run out of time on Lap-70 and was given the checkered flag at the end of the lap. #17 car finished 3rd in front of #16 car’s 4th, #100 car took 6th place all the way from the bottom grid, and #8 car finished 8th, a total of four CIVIC TYPE R-GT entrants earned each share of series points.

GT500 Race Result

GT500 Team Ranking