Honda Prelude-GT Scores First Win in Red-Flagged Fuji 300km

Overview

• Team Kunimitsu’s Naoki Yamamoto and Tadasuke Makino won the race for the #100 Stanley Honda, delivering the Prelude-GT its first GT500 victory while the #8 ARTA Prelude of Kaku Ohta and Hiroki Otsu finished a close second.
• The race was halted early after a three-car start-line crash that sent Igor Fraga’s Modulo Prelude airborne; Fraga was conscious when extracted and was taken to hospital for precautionary checks.
• Stewards judged Bertrand Baguette responsible for the incident and handed him a 90-second stop-and-hold penalty, a sanction that removed one Nissan contender from serious contention.
• Kaku Ohta had given the new Prelude its first GT500 pole in qualifying, and Hondas showed dominant pace across the weekend despite success ballast and BoP measures that affected other teams.
• In GT300, Shintaro Kawabata returned to take PONOS’s pole in the Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo but Saitama Green Brave’s Seita Nonaka and Hiroki Yoshida won the class after a late strategic tire call, a result that reshuffles the GT300 standings.