Straight from a successful FIA European F3 round in Europe, Kiwi Nick Cassidy has finished eleventh at the third round of the 2016 Autobacs Super GT Series in Japan. Having qualified fourth at the Sportsland Sugo circuit, the Lexus factory driver and team-mate Daisuke Ito first had to serve a stop-go penalty early in the race after a technical infringement during qualifying.
The #36 au TOM’s RC-F (Daisuke Ito / Nick Cassidy) looked good for points after recovering from their ten-second penalty stop, but was demoted from seventh to eleventh by race stewards after Cassidy was given a 37-second time penalty for dangerous driving.
Seventy-four laps on one set of Yokohama Advan tyres were just enough for Kondo Racing drivers Masataka Yanagida and Daiki Sasaki to hold on and win the third race of the 2016 Autobacs Super GT Series at Sportsland Sugo.
The race was called after 74 of a scheduled 81 laps, as the damage to the sponge barriers at 110R was too great to be repaired by corner workers in a timely manner.
That gave the win to Matchy’s squad in the new-look Nissan GT-R, their first since the 2015 Fuji 300km Race. For Sasaki, whose reputation as a late-race closer continues to grow every race, it is his second career GT500 race win, and for Yanagida, it is his fifth win – and first since the 2015 Buriram GT Race in Thailand.
Comments