By Johan Laubscher
The Japanese Super GT hosted its first official set of test days at Okayama this weekend. A total of four sessions were spread over Saturday and Sunday, with a pair of sessions each day. Audi Sport customer racing was represented by two teams at Okayama.
Audi Team Hitotsuyama and its W Racing Team supported Audi R8 LMS ultra performed well during the first official test of the 2015 Super GT. The #21 Audi R8 LMS ultra was driven by Richard Lyons, Tomonobu Fujii and Stéphane Ortelli. The Japanese Audi Sport customer racing team also took part in the manufacturer test days at Suzuka last week.
The Audi Team Racing Tech Audi R8 LMS ultra, the third car for JLOC's three-car 2015 squad, arrived at Okayama still wearing its Nova Engineering livery from the 2013 Super Taikyu Endurance Series. The livery was removed on Friday and the plain silver Audi R8 LMS ultra was pitted during the two days of testing by the trio of Shinya Hosokawa and Yoshitaka Kuroda, joined by German Audi driver, Christian Mamerow.
The final two sessions concluded the Okayama test days on Sunday. Hitotsuyama Racing again showed strong top ten pace with second in the morning and twenty-second during the afternoon, ahead of Audi Team Racing Tech in fifteenth and fourteenth.
Another set of official test days will be taking place at Fuji Speedway from 23-24 March, followed by the 2015 Super GT season getting underway at Okayama from 4-5 April.
Photo credit:
Hitotsuyama Racing
Stephane Ortelli
