Sepang Race to Be Capped at 35 Entries

Photo: SUPER GT

SUPER GT’s first international race in six years at Sepang International Circuit will be capped at 35 entries, with ten full-season GT300 entries set to miss the race.

Announced last year, the Japanese series will visit the Malaysian venue for the third round of the season as it ventures beyond its regular roster of six domestic venues for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, a bulletin issued by SUPER GT just over a week ago shows that only 33 of the 43 cars that are entered for the full season will be able to participate at Sepang.

A GTA spokesperson told Sportscar365 that this figure is made up of the 15 full-season GT500 entries, plus 18 so-called A-seeded teams in GT300.

An additional two grid slots will be reserved for local wildcard entries.

The cap is a result of the number of pit garages at Sepang: the track has 30 garages, with the GT500 teams getting one garage per car and the GT300 teams, including the two wildcards, being allocated three-quarters of a garage each.

Series such as the Asian Le Mans Series, which had 42 cars on the grid at Sepang, get around this restriction by requiring some two-car teams to use a single garage.

SUPER GT hosted 39 cars on its most recent visit to Sepang in 2013, but the GTA spokesperson explained that accommodating such a high number is now impossible because of the expansion of equipment in GT500 means a full garage is required per car.

It means that ten regular GT300 squads are set to miss out on the trip to Malaysia.

These include the seven B-seeded teams — apr (No. 30), Anest Iwata Racing, Team Mach, Pacific Racing, NILZZ Racing, R’Qs Motor Sports and Tsuchiya Engineering — as well as Gainer and new squads CarGuy MKS Racing and Seven x Seven Racing.

The A-seeded GT300 teams are essentially those that finished in the top 18 in last year’s teams’ standings, with the exception of Team Studie, which has withdrawn.

Instead, Tomei Sports, 20th in the teams’ rankings last year, has earned A-seed rights and an automatic berth to the Sepang round as a result, with 19th-placed Gainer losing that status for its failure to participate in all eight rounds last year.

Should any A-seeded teams opt not to make the trip to Sepang, then the B-seeded teams would be given first priority to replace them.

While there will be no additional opportunities for teams unable to participate at Sepang to score points throughout the year, only the best seven scores of this year’s eight rounds will count towards determining next year’s seeding rights.

The entry for the other seven events that make up this year’s SUPER GT calendar is capped at 45 cars, with the exception of round six at Sugo, which is restricted to 43 cars — the same number as the full-season entry.