Kvyat Takes Satisfaction From Unorthodox Okayama Pass

Photo: Masahide Kamio

Ex-Formula 1 driver Daniil Kvyat says he can take satisfaction from a top-six finish on his SUPER GT debut with the JLOC Lamborghini team at Okayama, which was capped off by an overtake on the Saitama Green Brave Toyota at an unusual location.

The factory Lamborghini racer was making his first appearance in the Japanese series, sharing the No. 88 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 he shared with Takashi Kogure, taking over for the second stint after Kogure’s pit stop on lap 40 of 77.

Steady progress from 14th on the grid put Kvyat seventh at that point, but in the closing stages he encountered Hiroki Yoshida’s Saitama Green Brave Toyota GR Supra.

With just a handful of laps to go, the JLOC driver was finally able to get ahead by going all the way around the outside at the tight Redman left-hander, giving himself the inside line for the following right-hander of Hobbs, to grab sixth.

Kvyat and Kogure were classified a lap down on the winning D’station Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo as they took the checkered flag after the winning GT500 car. The gap to the third-placed car, the first to finish off the lead lap, stood at 25 seconds.

“I think the team did a good job all week,” Kvyat told Sportscar365. “I communicated well with Kogure-san and [chief engineer Hitoshi] Iyoki-san (pictured above with Kvyat), and the decision-making was good with the set-up and strategy.

“Already in qualifying I was quite satisfied. We did a clean job, exactly what I wanted, and in the race we were pushing a bit harder to recover.

“Kogure-san did a good stint in the beginning and the pit stop was good, tire warm-up was good, and then I was able to extract quite good pace from the car.

“We changed only two tires, the rears, to keep position knowing it could be difficult pace-wise, but we had to do it and I was able to bring it home.”

Regarding his pass on Yoshida, Kvyat said a lack of straight line performance in relation the GR Supra — which had got ahead by virtue of not changing its tires during the pit stop — forced him to get creative in his bid to snatch the place away.

“I reached the No. 52 Toyota and I had to do something a bit creative to overtake him, because every time we were on the straights I couldn’t get close to him, even with slipstream, and he always had the breathing space to defend,” he recalled.

“I had to ‘invent’ the move and it worked well. I had to observe [Yoshida] for many laps and see what he was doing, but on that lap I was thinking it had to happen.”

Reviewing the weekend, Kvyat said that extracting the maximum from the Yokohama-shod Lamborghini over a single lap is the main thing to work on for future events.

“I feel quite well adapted here,” he said. “Qualifying on new tires and the peak of the tires is still quite new to me, because a lot of the guys have so much experience here, but I feel I am already close to them and that was important for me to know.

“I think I can still find a little step there, but anyway it was tidy. But in the race, I felt comfortable — I was able to attack, fight other people.

“At this track some other cars had serious pace, especially the [D’station] Aston Martin, and we didn’t have that in our hands. So we will see what it’s like next time.”

JLOC’s sister car, the No. 87 car shared by Yuya Motojima and Kosuke Matsuura, claimed the final point on offer in the GT300 class for a 15th-place finish.

Source: Sports Car 365