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Unlike previous seasons the final race this year was held at Motegi instead of Fuji. This was the final race for the Honda NSX model that will be scrapped for next year. I have yet to see what Honda will race instead. The other important factor this weekend was that all weight handicaps were removed so everyone was back on the same weight. A good opportunity to see the progress we’ve made since the start of the season.

Also, the qualifying system was slightly different. Instead of the normal Super Lap qualifying session there would be a F1 style knockout qualifying comprising of three sessions. We missed most of the free practice on Saturday morning with a propeller shaft failure. The team worked hard to get the car back out on track for the last 15 minutes of the session. Daisuke got a few laps but for me it was straight into qualifying for the second knockout session. Big pressure, but on my second attack lap I managed 4th quickest so we were safely through to Q3. We would end up starting the race in 3rd position.

As normal I drove the first stint and it was fairly uneventful. I followed the leaders in my third position and handed over to Daisuke half way through with a 4 second gap to the cars in front. In the second stint there was a safety car period and unfortunately we missed out on the final podium position during the last couple of laps.

On the positive side it is very obvious now that the team is finally strong enough to fight for the top positions. The arrival of our new engineer Kenji has made a big difference to the team. We’ve clearly been the quickest car/driver combination in the second part of the season with 4 Fastest Laps out of 9 races.

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Autopolis is kind of a strange place, a massive circuit built at the top of a mountain in the southern part of Japan on the island of Kyushu. You can read about it here - it’s worth it, the track has an interesting history. I first drove there in 2006 shortly after it had just opened again following Kawasakis takeover but at that point it must have been closed for something like ten years already. It’s kind of like a ghost track – nothing has been done to keep it maintained and the hotels were demolished a long time ago. Still, it’s a spectacular venue – even by todays much higher standards.

For us it was near miss again. We were comfortably quickest in the free practice and therefore opted for a harder tyre compound as the tarmac is known here to be very abrasive. We qualified in 5th place which was still ok as we knew most of the other cars in front were on softer tyres that weren’t likely to last.

After loosing out in the start I got back into 5th pretty quickly but then got stuck behind the #1 Nismo. We were still fairly close to the leaders and my tyres were still alright so I wasn’t too concerned, but on the lap after the Nismo pitted and I was able to start pushing before my own pitstop, I got a small touch by the Raybrig #100 car which sent me crashing into a GT300. Unfortunately that meant our race was over even though I managed to get back to the pits and swap with Daisuke.

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Some Photos from the weekend at Fuji. I thought this would be third time lucky for us as we had been strong enough to win the previous two races if it wasn’t for mechanical failures or weather conditions. But it wasn’t to be. After dominating the warm up in the morning we took the lead on lap three from our third starting position and were pulling away a second a lap. But then came the drive-through penalty. It was a 50-50 race incident but since I was the one that managed to keep going, I got the blame. And two penalty points…

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