Yamamoto and Makino Take SUPER GT Title in Honda Prelude's Debut Season

Honda's new Prelude GT500 car arrived this season with a point to prove, and it left Motegi with the championship. Naoki Yamamoto and Tadasuke Makino, sharing the No. 100 Team Kunimitsu car, won Sunday's final round to take the GT500 title. It was their third win of the year and enough to seal the crown outright.

The job was simple on paper. Yamamoto converted pole and then had to hold off Kenta Yamashita's TOM'S Toyota in the opening stint, which he did with some room to spare. Makino then took over and controlled the rest of the race. The pair had already moved to the top of the standings after finishing fifth in Saturday's opener, so a win on Sunday meant the result no longer depended on what their rivals did.

Those rivals were Yamashita and Sho Tsuboi in the No. 36 Toyota GR Supra, and they needed a lot to go right. It didn't.

What the Prelude did across the year

This is Honda's first GT500 title since 2020, when Yamamoto and Makino won the championship together. For Yamamoto it's a third crown. His first came in 2018 alongside Jenson Button, the Formula 1 world champion. Winning a title in a car's debut year is less common than it sounds, and it says something about how quickly the Prelude came together.

The numbers back that up. The new Prelude took five wins from a possible eight rounds. Toyota managed two, both by the No. 36 TOM'S pairing of Yamashita and Tsuboi. Nissan's only win came from Team Impul on Saturday. Honda's dominance was the story of the season, and Sunday reinforced it: Yuto Nomura's No. 17 Real Racing Honda, shared with Koudai Tsukakoshi, took second, 1.705 seconds behind the winning car, which gave Honda a 1-2 finish.

Where the title really slipped away for TOM'S

Yamashita had already dropped four seconds behind Yamamoto when both cars made their stops together on lap 22 of 53. The No. 36 crew's fate was effectively decided later, when Tsuboi lost ground to Tsukakoshi, whose Honda had pitted a lap earlier. A failed attempt to pass at Turn 11 didn't help.

Then came the drama. At the start of a full-course yellow period, Tsuboi made contact with the rear of Daniil Kvyat's Lamborghini GT300 car, damaging the front-left corner of the Toyota. That damage ultimately pushed the car down the order and into the garage. Before that, Tsuboi had understeered into Sacha Fenestraz's SARD Toyota as the FCY ended at Turn 11. Fenestraz was able to continue.

Podium shuffle after inspection

Fenestraz, who had taken over from Yuhi Sekiguchi, crossed the line third after holding off Kazuki Hiramine's Team Impul Nissan in a late battle. SARD again ran a no-tire-change strategy. Post-race, though, the car was stripped of that third place for a skid block violation. That promoted Impul's pairing of Baguette and Hiramine to the final podium spot.

This is the second straight race in which a GR Supra team failed post-race inspection for the same offence. Rookie Racing lost its second place on Saturday for the same reason. Toyota will be paying attention to its skid block checks heading into next season.

The reshuffle also cost NISMO. Katsumasa Chiyo and Mitsunori Takaboshi in the No. 23 car should have been promoted to fourth, but a 40-second time penalty for a pit stop violation dropped them to 11th in the final classification. Instead, Toshiki Oyu and Rikuto Kobayashi moved up to fourth in the Cerumo Toyota, with Rookie duo Nirei Fukuzumi and Kazuya Oshima fifth.

A tire war ends quietly

Sunday also marked the last-ever race of SUPER GT's tire war, and the non-Bridgestone cars struggled to make an impression. The Racing Project Bandoh Toyota on Yokohamas finished 12th, while the Nakajima Racing Honda on Dunlops slid from third on the grid to 13th. A traffic-induced spin for Riki Okusa in the second stint didn't help that car.

GT300: a title decided by a single overtake

In GT300, Joao Paulo de Oliveira and Iori Kimura won the title for Kondo Racing's Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3, with fourth place enough to take it. The race itself went to the No. 88 JLOC Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 of Kvyat and Takashi Kogure.

The lead swung back and forth. K-tunes Racing's Lexus RC F, with Morio Nitta and Shinichi Takagi, looked like the team to beat early, even after Nitta had a rough first lap. Kimura started 15th and had to fight his way forward. Then Takagi picked up a drive-through for speeding at pit exit, and K-tunes' chance of a comeback disappeared.

That left Seven x Seven Racing's Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo in front. Sven Mueller inherited the net lead after a strong stint from Taichi Watarai, and at one point he was 11 seconds clear. That cushion evaporated once Kvyat, who had been among the few front-runners to change rear tires, began carving through. Kvyat took over from Kogure and caught Mueller quickly after the FCY period. He completed the pass on lap 48 with a three-stage move at Turns 3, 4 and 5, first on the inside, then holding the outside, then taking the inside again.

Mueller needed the win to overturn the title deficit, but by the time he conceded to Kvyat, de Oliveira was already in fourth, the position he needed. Getting there wasn't easy. He had to beat Kosuke Matsuura's No. 87 JLOC Lamborghini, which had briefly led after skipping a tire change, and then Ryuichiro Tomita's Gainer Nissan. Matsuura's rear-guard defense ended with contact at Turn 11 and a drive-through.

That contact handed Tomita third in the Gainer Z he shares with Kazuki Oki. It's the team's first podium with its self-built car. The title margin finished at eight points over Mueller. K-tunes ended third in the championship, with Nitta and Takagi taking 10th on the day after the earlier penalty. Rookie Racing's new GR GT3 concept finished 24th after a drive-through for pit lane speeding.

What to watch next

For buyers and enthusiasts, the takeaway is that Honda's Prelude arrived as a genuine front-runner, not a project car. Five wins out of eight is a clear advantage in any series. Toyota's problems this weekend were mostly procedural, but two inspection failures in consecutive races will draw scrutiny. The end of the tire war also changes the competitive picture for the next season, and that's where the real test of the Prelude's staying power will come.

RESULTS: GT500/GT300