Nick Cassidy and Ryo Hirakawa have surrendered the lead of the Super GT championship after finishing fourth in the second round of the truncated 2020 season at Fuji Speedway.
Usurping the Kiwi at the head of the standings is TOMs Supra teammates Yuhi Sekiguchi and Sacha Fenestraz. Despite carrying 30kg of success ballast, the duo matched their second place result from the season opener climbing from sixth on the grid.
Taking a dominant victory was Bertrand Baguette and Koudai Tsukakoshi in the #17 Keihin Honda NSX-GT, the first Super GT win for the team in over two years.
Baguette initially struggled to match the pace of pole-sitter and erstwhile leader Nirei Fukuzumi but kept within touching distance, making a move for the lead on Lap 15 as Fukuzumi ran into tyre issues.
Baugette then stopped first on Lap 30 before Fukuzumi responded five laps later to resume the battle for the lead between Tsukakoshi and Tomoki Nojiri.
The two Honda’s went toe-to-toe as they diced for lead before their battle was abruptly halted when Nojiri spun at Turn 12 on cold tyres, leaving Tsukakoshi up front with an unassailable lead over the leading TOMs Supra.
After their opening round triumph, Cassidy and Hirakawa were forced to run with the maximum 42kg success ballast which meant they could only muster 10th in qualifying. But the pair showed impressive race pace and capitalised on rivals mistakes to clinch fourth.
Ahead of them was the #14 Cerumo Toyota of Sho Tsuboi and Kazuya Oshima, who also repeated their result from three weeks ago after moving up from eighth on the grid.
The GT300 class saw a popular victory for the #2 Syntium Apple Lotus Evora MC of Hiroki Katoh and Masataka Yanagida.
The third round of the shortened 2020 Super GT season is scheduled to be staged on August 22-23 from Suzuka.
Full Race Replay below:
