Just a few months late with this review of the fourth round of the Super GT which was held at the rather interesting Sepang circut in Kuala Lumpur. So I'm not going to do a lengthy review since lets face it you could have ready just about any number of sources already on the race. No instead I think I'll look at the choice bits and pieces that were out there.

The Super GT race at Sepang is the notorious for being the hottest race of the season where the teams have to do more battle with the hot weather than with the other cars. Cooling the drivers and cars down is a huge challenge one in which the Nissan GT-R cars are working to include A/C in the cars. However, this year seemed to be not as hot with rain clouds threatening above.

With one obstacle down the cars headed out to do battle but not all of them made it to the starting line. The pole leading Motul GT-R developed transmission problems and had to start from pit lane and dead last. Those on the race didn't exactly get a good start either. With everyone bunching up into the first corner it gave the GT500 winner the advantage that he needed to get out ahead and stay there the entire race. The Hasemi Motorsport GT-R won the GT500 class easily. While the Odd ball prototype APPLE Shiden thing fought his way through the pack to take the GT300 win.

While the race was pretty mundane and just uneventful for the most part it was the Honda NSX cars that did the most battling. At the beginning of the race the Rockstar NSX showed some great talent fighting it's way up to 2nd place until it was punted off course by the Motul GTR sending the NSX way back to 12th place a sad end for a good day of racing. The NSXs wouldn't be denied this race though as three of them were battling for 2nd and 3rd positions with the Keihin NSX making the most of the race and some rather well done passing in the corners. Fighting hard to finish in 2nd place with the Arta NSX just behind it for 3rd place.

The GT300 race was a bit more interesting but not by much. The pole winning S Road Z started the race looking good and holding on to the lead for some time before it was eventually overtaken by the Weds Sport IS350 who was overtaken by the Shiden. More interesting than that was that there as a Lamborghini running in the top 5 positions. Amazing since most of the time the end up out of the race or way at the back of pack. I wish they would get a little more coverage than they do but that means they need to step up their game and get higher up the leader board. Another interesting thing was a new car in the GT300 series racing only in this race was a new Mosler MT900R from Thunder Asia which was doing great up until I believe some issue developed with car allowing it to lose several positions rather easily and then sending it to the garage to be looked at. Several other cars also went to the garage with issues one of them was the Eneos SC430 was headed in there early on losing several laps.

With that another round of the 2009 Super GT season is over and I'll hopefully get to the 5th round tomorrow.

Check out the spin of the Rockstar NSX:

Now that was some racing! Was able to watch the second round of the Autobacs Super GT series held this time at Suzuka Circuit on Monday (while the third round was going on in Japan) and with the sun out and the track in great shape for racing we finally got some good racing action going on. However, what we didn't get is another race with the StudieGLAD Racing BMW Z4. Moving along though lets get back to the cars that did show up to race.

The GT500 race was finally a well fought race from start to finish. Well Ok there was some parts in the middle that was really boring but the beginning was a hard fought battle between the Motul GTR and a pair of hungry Lexus SC430s that were looking to take the lead away from the GTRs and while there was a bit of traffic helping the lead GTR get away from the SC430s for a while anyways. Even after getting passed by the Impul GTR the Zent Lexus SC430 was able to fight back from 7th place all the way up to 1st place with a huge battle between 1-3 during that last 10 laps or so of the race. First it started with Petronas and Zent jumping down MOtul's back side almost sending Zent off course. Petronas was able to pass the Motul GTR and Zent was able to follow behind quickly leaving Motul in third wondering what happened. Then Zent went after Petronas with aggressive driving side by side getting a little bump action going but not giving up any space until Petronas backed off a bit and Zent was able to surge ahead and take 1st place. All within the last five laps left to go. Sadly Petronas nor Motul were able to fight back due to a full course yellow which would end the racing for the day.

On the GT300 side there was even more battles going on. Not so much for 1st place mind you as that was won by the Hankook Porsche 911 that started on Pole and pretty much staid there the entire race with out much of a threat from anyone else. The major player during the GT300 was the Privee Apple Shiden car that didn't even make it to the starting line but was able to fight back to an astounding finish in that it was able to finish in 7th. Of course the Lamborghinis are still having issues and yet again there was another Lamborghini on the side of the track after breaking down but it looked like the cars having the biggest issue this race were the two Lexus IS350s since both spent some time spinning off course and one could say that the Reckless IS350 was just a bit too reckless during this race. Still with the wreck in the last few laps the racing was called short due to the full course yellow.

To me it's interesting that there is so few multicar wrecks during the Super GT races considering how much traffic there is and how many twists and turns there are to navigate around. However that wasn't the case during the last few laps of this race as a handful of cars got into a banger of a mess. Since they didn't show a replay of the accident I can only speculate as to what happened during the wreck that involved the Autobacs Arta NSX, the Bomex 320R, the HASEMI GTR and I believe the Raybrig NSX the wreck was so bad that it send the driver of the Masemi GTR off in an ambulance. Since this was a pretty serious wreck it caused a full course caution and brought out the pace car. The race ended up being called under the full course yellow so the last couple of laps were rather boring and uneventful. You can find the official results of the race here.

With the second race in the bag for me I get to look forward to the release of the third race and hopefully I'll get to it before the next scheduled race in June. Once again I'm using an image taken by this guy and if you take a look at his sets you'll find a whole host of new images as well.

Finally getting around to blogging about the first round of the Autobacs Super GT first round held at Okayama during a very wet March weekend. Honestly this is my first time blogging about a race so I'm sitting here looking at my notes wondering what the hell I'm doing. Yes I wrote notes during the race so that I could remember what the hell was going on besides cars going zoom zoom around a track. I guess the best way to go is to split the race into it's two groups the GT500 group and the GT300 group as as much as everyone is going gaga over the new Nissan GT-R I find that the GT300 group is more interesting to watch and during this opening race that was very much the case.

The GT500 race was fairly boring since the contention for 1st place was made during the first lap of racing as the HIS Nissan GT-R staid in 1st place the entire race leaving the battling to 2-3 place and even that wasn't nearly as interesting as what was happening back in GT300 group. The one non-Japanese entrance in the GT500 group was an FIAGT (I think) Aston Martin DBR9 that had a hard time not getting lapped by everyone. A little looking around it might be the fault of a poor setup and limits that are set for that series of cars.

Now the GT300 group was a lot more interesting to watch as there were countless battles for different places and the entire field of cars is made of different cars so there is something for everyone to like. I didn't see any 350Z cars though and there was even a lot less Porsche 911 cars as well. What I did like to see again was the Studio GLAD Racing BMW Z4GTR from last year making a come back and even though it only finished in 15th place at least this year it finished a race. I'm going to be looking forward to seeing it race more throughout the year. There are also a handful of Ferrari and Lamborghini fielded cars as well. There are even a couple of purebred race cars (I can't think of what to actually call them but they look like older LeMans and Can-am prototype cars). The GT300 race was won by the Lexus IS350 but more impressive was Autobacs odd duck race car that ended up battling back from 7th place to take 2nd. Impressive.

Since this was a very wet race it wasn't unusual to see a few cars over cooking corners and ending up off course or even sometimes getting into a bit of a bang up with other cars. And even though I'm a big fan of the smash ups Super GT wrecks don't look all that spectacular and pretty boring. Guess I'll just get my smash up fix from lame ass Nascar. All in all it was a great race even if I was getting bored around the 2hr mark when things started getting repetitive and boring until the Autobacs/Arta race car started making it's move up the field. Now at least I can watch the second race and get to blogging about that. Now I just need to find a good source of Super GT race car pictures. So far one of the better places that I've found is this guys collection on flickr and I hope he doesn't mind me borrowing his image for my blog post. I tried last year to get a media pass for SuperGT.net but they never got back to me about any of it so didn't try to apply this year as well.