Super Taikyu Series kicks off next weekend with Fuji 24Hr
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
The much delayed 2020 Pirelli Super Taikyu Series finally gets to start their season off next weekend with a mouth watering 24 hour race from the Fuji Speedway.
Amongst the eight classes and forty five expected entries into this years events sees the Japanese D'Station Racing AMR team again support an Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 car within the top flight ST-X class as well as a (new for 2020) AMR Vantage GT4 car within the second tier ST-Z class.
Having swapped to the AMR Vantage GT3 platform for the first time in 2019, the team came in runners up in the overall Championship after AMR factory driver Darren Turner got the team off to a flying start in 2019 before drivers Satoshi Hoshino, Tomonobu Fujii and Tsubasa Kondo took things to the end, narrowly missing out on a Series win at the final race of the season.
This season, we see all three GT3 drivers return to the Series for 2020 as well as a whole new driver crew for their GT4 entry, a car that will race for the very first time at Fuji since they acquired it from Prodrive at the tail end of last year.
Like the teams parallel Super GT programme, their Super Taikyu efforts shall again be affected by the ongoing travel restrictions into and out of Japan due to the ongoing CV-19 issues meaning that the Prodrive supplied technicians and engineers remain (at the moment) unable to freely travel in and out of Japan within long periods of self isolation. That support will still be there but (like with the Super GT programme), it will all be remote from a 'control room' at Prodrive.
Running both cars at the Series official test at Fuji in July (having originally tested for the usual intended start off the season in March), the team have now confirmed they driver roster for the Super Tec 24. Joining Hoshino, Fujii and Kondo in the #777 GT3 will be Yuya Motoshima with the #47 AMR GT4 crew being listed as Tatsuya Hoshino, Manabu Orido and Kenji Hama for the season ahead with the first two being joined by Tsubasa Meikari and Takuro Shinohara in for the 24hr.
Photo credits - D'Station Racing