In the opening round of the 2023 SUPER GT, held at Okayama International Circuit on April 15th and 16th, Astemo REAL RACING finished the final race in 7th, earning valuable points despite difficult qualifying and final race conditions.
Matsushita took on Q1, who started amidst the pouring rain, He struggled with the difficult track conditions and was unable to improve his time, finishing 13th. The race strategy for the final race would be to catch up from the back of the grid.
In the final race, it started raining as soon as the race started, but Matsushita increased his pace from the onset, improving his position steadily. Increasing rainfall forced a change to wet tires, and a lot of accidents occurred on the course. Our team was able to jump up to 5th despite the chaos on the track with the introduction of the Full Course Yellow (FCY)* and the Safety Car (SC). However, after the rain started to stop it was difficult to pick up the pace, and on lap 41 the team switched drivers from Matsushita to Tsukakoshi, changing from wet to slick tires.
The team was able to catch up with the fastest lap time by changing tires ahead of other teams, but heavy rain again caused the SC to be re-introduced and the race to be red-flagged.
Even after the race restarted, the weather conditions were too unstable to complete a full number of laps, and the race was finally red-flagged for an early end, before the maximum extended time of 16:30.