Team Impul Breaks Nissan's Winless SUPER GT Season at Motegi

Team Impul's Bertrand Baguette and Kazuki Hiramine took their first SUPER GT win of 2026 in Saturday's penultimate round at Motegi. It's a result that matters for Nissan more than the points table suggests. Without it, the brand would have finished the GT500 season without a win, and Honda's run of four straight victories would have carried into the final weekend. Instead, the No. 12 Nissan Z NISMO is the car to beat when the title is decided on Sunday.

A late charge from sixth on the grid

Baguette and Hiramine started sixth in the No. 12 Nissan. Hiramine did the heavy lifting in the second stint, moving from a net fourth to the lead. Motegi is also the track where this pairing won the GT500 title in 2022, so the venue carries some history for them.

The first half of the race belonged to the Nakajima Racing Honda on pole. Igor Fraga built a lead after an early safety car period, and the car was carrying Dunlop tires that were chasing the tire supplier's first GT500 win since 2017. That target looked realistic for most of the opening stint.

Strategy and tire wear decided the order

Fraga handed over to Riki Okusa on lap 22 of 53. That was the same lap that Nirei Fukuzumi pitted his Rookie Racing Toyota GR Supra to bring in Kazuya Oshima. Baguette followed a lap later and emerged third after climbing from sixth.

Hiramine then dealt with the SARD Toyota of Sacha Fenestraz on lap 29. Fenestraz had gained track position by keeping his tires on at his stop, a gamble that cost him once the cars behind had fresh rubber. Hiramine passed Oshima six laps later.

The decisive move came on lap 39 at Turn 1. Okusa had a five-second cushion at the front, but his Dunlop tires were fading quickly, and Hiramine took advantage on the Nakajima Honda. From there he pulled away to a 20-second winning margin. He said the win was his and Baguette's first since the Suzuka round of their title-winning 2022 season.

For a tire-and-strategy race, the lesson is fairly clear. Rubber that drops off in a long stint can cost a leader far more than a few seconds per lap. Tire life and pit timing were the real story here.

The ARTA gamble and a difficult afternoon for TOM'S

The No. 8 ARTA Honda ran last early on, then waited until lap 35 to pit. The team changed only the front-left tire as Hiroki Otsu handed over to Kaku Ohta. Ohta came out fourth, passed Oshima and then Okusa to run second, but he began to struggle with grip. He was eventually repassed by Oshima.

That result gave Fukuzumi and Oshima their first podium since the second round of the season at Fuji. Okusa then got past the faded Ohta for third, which gave the Nakajima Honda its first points of the year. Ohta held on to fourth, and Fenestraz defended hard against Tadasuke Makino's Team Kunimitsu Honda to take fifth for SARD and co-driver Yuhi Sekiguchi.

The bigger loser on the day was the No. 36 TOM's Toyota. Sho Tsuboi and Kenta Yamashita had led the championship going into the race, but they finished 11th without a point.

Title picture ahead of Sunday

Makino and Naoki Yamamoto now lead the championship by two points. Real Racing Honda's Koudai Tsukakoshi and Yuto Nomura recovered from last to seventh and sit 14 points back. Rookie Racing and Team Impul are 17 points adrift, so both need to win on Sunday to have any chance.

After the race, technical inspection found a skid block violation on the Rookie Racing Toyota, and the car was disqualified. That moves Okusa and Fraga up to second and Ohta and Otsu to the final podium place. The disqualification barely changes the title fight. The Kunimitsu Honda and the TOM's Toyota still have a three-point gap, since both gained one point from the revised order. Rookie Racing has appealed, so the results stay provisional until that's settled.

GT300: a front-row start pays off for K-tunes

In GT300, K-tunes Racing's Lexus RC F GT3 won again, the second straight win. Morio Nitta and Shinichi Takagi converted their front-row start into a serious title push. Nitta is retiring after this weekend, which adds some emotion to the result.

The start was chaotic. Tsubasa Kondo, standing in for the banned Tomonobu Fujii in the D'station Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo, appeared to misjudge his braking at Turn 3 and collided with Miki Koyama's apr Lexus LC500h. Koyama had lost speed just before that, which left a large bunch of cars behind the top four. Kiyoshi Umegaki's CarGuy MKS Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo was caught up in the incident and couldn't avoid Kondo's Aston Martin. That effectively ended his outside hopes for the title.

After the safety car period, Kazuki Oki led in the Gainer Z. A drive-through penalty for a safety car restart infraction wiped out the team's chance at a first win. The main challenge to K-tunes came from Seven x Seven Racing's Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo. Taichi Watarai started 14th, and fast pit work put Sven Mueller into the net lead. Takagi caught and passed him, and Takagi and Nitta won by almost 12 seconds. The win was Takagi's 23rd in GT300, and Nitta's 24th.

Mueller held on for third after fending off Daniil Kvyat's JLOC Lamborghini Huracan EVO2 late on. Both cars scored their best finishes of the season so far. The PONOS Racing Ferrari rounded out the top five.

Joao Paulo de Oliveira and Iori Kimura scored one point in 15th. Their Kondo Racing Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 took a drive-through for pit lane speeding and two five-second penalties for contact. That was enough to keep them at the top of the standings. Post-race, the second-placed Anest Iwata Nissan was disqualified for a turbo boost pressure violation. That moved Mueller and Watarai to second and Kvyat and Takashi Kogure to their first podium, in third.

After the revisions, de Oliveira and Kimura lead by nine points from Nitta and Takagi, and Mueller is 13 points back with 26 still available on Sunday.

The provisional results for GT500 and GT300 are linked above. For Nissan, the Motegi win is the first GT500 result since last year's Sugo round, and it gives the brand a platform heading into the decider. Sunday's finale will settle a GT500 title fight that's still wide open.