By Tarek Ramchani
Twin Ring Motegi hosted today the season finale of the 2014 Japanese Super GT series. Audi Team Hitotsuyama the only Audi team in the field performed well.
The Audi Japan backed squad qualified in ninth place within the GT300 class yesterday. The team’s #21 Audi R8 LMS ultra in the hands of Richard Lyons and Tomonobu Fujii was able to recover on track today and was among the fastest cars in class.
Both Richard Lyons and Tomonobu Fujii managed to overtake several cars and were close to take a GT300 podium. In the very closing stages of the race, the Audi batteled very hard with the #4 BMW Z4 GT3 from team Goodsmile Racing. The R8 LMS ultra was fast hunting Z4 GT3 but time out and the Audi finished the race right behind the third placed BMW.
Today’s results are a right reward for Audi Team Hitotsuyama, Richard Lyons and Tomonobu Fujii and Audi Japan as well. The 2014 season was really tough one for the Audi squad in Super GT, the team worked very hard all year long but was always facing a penalizing Balance of Performance.
Overall race victory today at Motegi and GT500 championship title went to the factory #23 Motul NIMOS Nissan GT-R driven by Ronnie Quintarelli and Tsugio Matsuda. In GT300 both Nobuteru Taniguchi and Tatsuya Kataoka are the class champions with the BMW Z4 GT3 from Goodsmile Racing.
We at Audi Motorsport Blog want to thank Audi Team Hitotsuyama for their great support this season. We hope to see the team back in the premier Japanese auto series working again with Audi Japan and Audi Sport customer racing.
Photo credit: Hitotsuyama Racing
