The #38 ZENT Cerumo Lexus LC500 of Yuji Tachikawa and Hiroaki Ishiura ended a three-year winless drought for Lexus Gazoo Racing at Fuji International Speedway by taking a comprehensive victory from pole position in the 2017 Fuji GT 500km Race.
And it was a milestone victory for Cerumo’s ace driver Yuji Tachikawa, who moves back into a tie for the all-time lead in career GT500 race wins with his 18th career victory. It’s also his record-extending eighth win at Fuji Speedway, and fourth in the Golden Week race (2002, 2005, 2008).
Lexus swept the GT500 podium for the second straight race in 2017, with the #6 Wako’s 4CR LC500 (Kazuya Oshima/Andrea Caldarelli) finishing second for the second straight race in 2017, and the #37 KeePer TOM’s LC500 (Ryo Hirakawa/Nick Cassidy) holding on to the GT500 Championship lead with a third-place finish.
In GT300, the Lexus RC F GT3 took its first Super GT victory as the #51 JMS P.MU LM Corsa RC F GT3 of Yuichi Nakayama and Sho Tsuboi held off the #11 Gainer Tanax Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Katsuyuki Hiranaka/Björn Wirdheim) to score a Lexus double victory in GT500 and GT300, a great result at the home circuit for Toyota Motor Corporation.
The #33 D’Station Porsche 911 GT3-R (Tomonobu Fujii/Sven Müller) recovered from an early incident, dropping to 21st, and charging back through the field to finish third and complete the podium. The #4 Goodsmile Hatsune Miku AMG (Nobuteru Taniguchi/Tatsuya Kataoka) dominated the first half of the race from pole, but two untimely left-front punctures knocked them out of the points with nothing to show for their efforts.
This story will be updated with in-depth GT500 and GT300 race reports, coming soon to this space, and to DailySportsCar.com.
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