MUGEN

2014.5.13

The season has started with the new pair of Nakayama and Nojiri with “MUGEN CR-Z GT” scored points!

Series name: 2014 AUTOBACS SUPER GT SERIES ROUND 1
Event: OKAYAMA GT 300KM RACE
Course: 3.703km × 82 laps (303.646km)
Qualifying: 2014-04-05 Sat / Cloudy / Attendance 9,000 (Announcement from the organizer)
Race: 2014-04-06 Sun / Cloudy, Fine, Rain / Attendance 18,000 (Announcement from the organizer)

#0 MUGEN CR-Z GT (Yuhki Nakayama / Tomoki Nojiri) entered the SUPER GT Series Round1, which was held in OKAYAMA International Circuit (Okayama Prefecture) on April 5th and 6th. MUGEN CR-Z GT, which won the Super GT 300 Championship in the last season, has the new colors for this season carrying the number 0, which is given to the champion.

After the experimental entry into the latter half of the 2012 series, the team entered the series fully last year and won the championship. The new theme for the team in 2014 series is to develop new talent via CR-Z GT which is a hybrid race car. For this purpose, while keeping Nakayama as a driver as well as the case last year, the team got Nojiri, who accumulated experience through Japanese Formula 3 Championship, as the new partner driver to replace Muto, who switched to GT500.

The car body to be used is exactly the same ZF-2-based one, which was used last year and came to perfection, and only partial improvements such as increasing power steering capacity were made. However, because of the partial change in conditions of entry for the 2014 SUPER GT Class II (GT300), the relation between the minimum weight and air inlet restrictor was reduced from 1,100 kg/28.5, 1,150 kg/29.1, and 1,200 kg/29.6 in the final race in 2013 to 1,100 kg/28.09, 1,150 kg/28.66, and 1,200 kg/29.24 for #0 MUGEN CR-Z GT. This forced the team to reduce the maximum engine power output. In addition, the weight of a hybrid system was increased from 58 kg to 60.1 kg, and though 3 mm was reduced from the midway imposed requirement to adjust performance for the minimum ground height, it was eventually specified to be 50 mm, which was longer than the original height of 45 mm by 5 mm, and the series began.

April 5th, (Sat)

■  Official qualifying: 5th position (Q1:7th position / 00:01:27.563, Q2: 5th position / 00:01:27.367)

As has happened in the past, the qualifying process is in the two-step knockout format consisting of Q1, which every car enters, and Q2, which only top 13 cars in Q1 can enter to determine the starting grid for the race. The starting grid for the final race is determined based on the result of Q2 for the top 13 cars which entered Q2, and on the result of Q1 for other cars. In Q1 and Q2, two different drivers have to enter, and using a set of tires for Q1 and another set of tires for Q2 is allowed.

The team entered the qualifying with a pair of Nakayama for Q1 and Nojiri for Q2 to certainly rank high in Q1. The temperature was low, but the track was in dry conditions. Nakayama took laps to fully warm tires up, tried a time attack in the final lap after taking eight laps, recorded 00:1:27.563 as the 7th position, and was accepted to enter Q2 as planned.

Nojiri, who entered Q2, carefully warmed tires up, tried a time attack on Lap 5 to record 1 minute and 27-something seconds, took the next lap for cooling down and battery regeneration, tried the second time attack on Lap 7 to reduced the time to 00:1:27.367 and got the 5th position in the qualifying for #0 MUGEN CR-Z GT.

April 6th, (Sat)

■  Final race: 9th position (75laps, 01:57:59.259, Best record: 00:01:30:307)

After the free run and during the support event, the weather was unsettled with the heavy snowy rain started. However, when the final race of the SUPER GT began, it became fine and the track was in dry conditions. The starting driver was Nakayama.

For the rolling start, one warm-up lap was followed by one formation lap in consideration of the warm-up of carbon brakes in the GT500 class. However, since the formation could not be arranged during the formation lap, one more formation lap was added before the race started. Nakayama, who was in grid five, kept his position when he went through the first corner. However, in the second corner, he took the outside line to pass the car ahead, was blocked, and this resulted in the delay in acceleration. In the meantime, he was passed by the car behind and fell to the 7th position instead.

Though Nakayama drove faster than the car ahead, even if he got closer to the car ahead in a corner, he got behind when accelerating and in straight sections, and in this situation, he was outdistanced more and more from the top group. After Lap 15, the weather changed suddenly and it started to rain. Part of the track got wet, but Nakayama continued to drive with dry-weather tires. He drove rather faster than other cars, but couldn't pass any while the weather recovered and the track got dry again.

Partly because of the car ahead which retired, Nakayama finished Lap 39 actually in the 6th position and made a pit stop for fueling and replacing all four tires with new ones, and Nojiri took his turn. Though the team initially had an option to replace only two rear tires to reduce the pit stop time, they talked with Nakayama on the radio while he was driving the car and decided to replace the four tires because they thought it would lead to a better result for Nojiri, who was not so experienced, to replace all four tires with new ones without losing balance by replacing only rear tires with new ones.

Nojiri came back on the track and started to drive at a good pace, however, when he gave way to GT500 and got out of line, tires caught tire debris accumulated on the track causing the reduction of grip, and this troubled Nojiri. He fell into a slower pace and allowed cars, which were following his car, to pass. Eventually, Nojiri finished 9th in the race with two laps behind the winner.

As a result, TEAM MUGEN got three points in total, two points (9th position) for the team and one point as race completion points (two laps behind the winner), and Nakayama/Nojiri got two driver's points (9th position) at the start of the new season.

■ Comments from the team director, Junichi Kumakura

Because of the further reduced air inlet restrictor, this makes races very difficult in straight sections this year. On the other hand, since the ground height remained higher than the original design, this causes the lack of total downforce and insufficient aerodynamic performance. In this situation, we had to precondition the car and tires from the free run. We didn't know how fast Nojiri would drive in the qualifying, so we planned to innocuously get Nakayama drive in Q1 to be ranked in the top 13 if we were lucky. However, Nojiri, who had learned Nakayama's data, did well and got the 5th position by his own efforts. Considering that this is the first time for him to enter the QF, we are very satisfied with the unexpectedly good result.

In the final race, Nojiri was struggling with problems such as tires picking up debris, but this is GT races. You must compete in GT races while addressing these problems. This will be the next challenge. It depends on tracks, but Okayama includes some sections in which removing debris tires picked up is difficult. This time, they completed the race anyway, and I think our purpose was achieved because our theme for this year is fostering of new drivers. I think Nojiri has a very good aptitude and will do a good job when he gets into it.

♦ Photo Gallery (Round1)