Kogure and Duval dominate in Super GT at Sepang19/06/2011
Sepang International Circuit, Malaysia
Super GT Round 3
The third round of the Super GT championship took place at the Sepang International Circuit, in Malaysia, on Sunday 19 June. Takashi Kogure and Loic Duval in their Bridgestone shod Honda HSV-010 qualified in pole position and had the perfect weekend, taking their first victory of the year.
Qualifying
Saturday’s qualifying followed the ‘Super Lap’ system, this format being used at the majority of Super GT rounds. The Super Lap format involves time trials run one car at a time. Kogure and Duval set a Super Lap time of 1m55s which gave them pole position for the race, while Masataka Yanagida and Ronnie Quintarelli in the Nissan GT-R were in second, with Toshihiro Kaneishi and Koudai Tsukakoshi third in their Honda HSV-010.
Race
Rain was expected on race day, but the weather was fine and the circuit was dry. Duval led from the start and had a strong lead over his closest competitors. The French driver passed the car to Kogure, and the driver pairing went from pole to victory with outstanding speed. Yanagida and Quintarelli finished second, with Kaneishi and Tsukakoshi also retaining their qualifying position to take the final step on the podium.
Winning drivers
Takashi Kogure: “Now I am comfortable, with our first win this season. Loic created a big lead for me so I just drove to achieve our goal. Thanks to Bridgestone, we had very good grip even with high track temperatures.”
Loic Duval: “I would like to say thank you to Honda, our team and Bridgestone. We have lost some races that we could have won, so this win makes me very happy. I want to keep this good form to get more points.”
Bridgestone Tyre engineer: Yoshihiro Hosoya
“It was a perfect race for the Dome team. They used the soft tyre which made more laps than we expected with good wear. Competing tyre manufacturers are close to us but we will continue our tyre development ahead of the next Super GT rounds at Sugo and Suzuka.”
