Toyota’s Super GT Reign Ended in the Garage With Eight Laps to Go

Toyota’s three-year hold on the Super GT championship ended on Sunday with its title car parked in the garage, its left front corner broken, and eight laps still to run. Sho Tsuboi and Kenta Yamashita needed to win the Motegi finale in the #36 au TOM’S GR Supra to take a fourth straight GT500 crown, and instead the #100 Stanley Honda Prelude of Naoki Yamamoto and Tadasuke Makino led from pole, won by 1.705 seconds and took the title by 23 points.

The Supra’s day unraveled in the space of two laps. Tsuboi had spent the second stint stuck behind the second Honda, lunged at it on lap 41 and came away with light damage, then ran into the back of a slower GT300 Lamborghini as the field slowed for a full-course yellow on lap 42. The contact bent the car’s left front, a second clash at the same corner once racing resumed made it worse, and Tsuboi pulled in and climbed out with 45 of the 53 laps completed. The stewards then added two 40-second penalties to a car that had already stopped.

The official classification, published by Autosport web after the results became final at 6:30 pm Japan time, lists the #36 thirteenth and last of the classified GT500 cars, eight laps down. The Motegi GT 250km Race Grand Final was run over 53 laps on a 17-degree Celsius afternoon with the track at 23 degrees, and with no success weight on any car, which left the two title contenders racing on equal terms for the first time since spring. Honda’s Prelude GT, in its first season, won five of the eight races. Toyota won two, both with the #36, and Nissan took the other on Saturday.

The arithmetic going in was simple. The Honda crew led by two points, 64 to 62, after Saturday’s race, and whichever of the two won on Sunday would be champion. Makino took pole in the morning with Tsuboi alongside him on the front row, and the first stint went the way the grid suggested. Yamamoto led into Turn 1 and had about a second and a half in hand after a lap, a safety car for a GT300 crash at the S-curves bunched the field until lap 5, and by lap 12 Yamashita had closed to within a second and was running nose to tail with the Honda through traffic. Both cars pitted together on lap 22. The Honda’s stop took 23.8 seconds and the Supra’s 24.5, and Sportscar365 puts the gap at four seconds as they came in. The #17 Astemo Honda of Koudai Tsukakoshi and Yuto Nomura had stopped a lap earlier and used its warm tires to jump Tsuboi on his out lap, so the Supra rejoined third with two Hondas ahead of it and a win to find.

Tsuboi closed on Tsukakoshi and tried the inside of the 90-degree corner on lap 41, and the two cars touched hard enough to send bodywork flying without changing places. The full-course yellow for that debris came a lap later, and as the field slowed Tsuboi struck the rear of the #88 Venteny Lamborghini that Daniil Kvyat was driving to the GT300 win. The Supra’s left front flic was broken, and when the yellow lifted Tsuboi understeered into the side of the #39 SARD Supra of Sacha Fenestraz at the same corner. Autosport web’s race report records that the damage worsened, the car returned to the pits and Tsuboi got out. The penalties, one for each contact, were academic.

Makino drove the final 31 laps from the front and won the car’s third race of the year. Yamamoto’s title is his third, after 2018 and 2020, and Makino’s second. It is Team Kunimitsu’s first since founder Kunimitsu Takahashi died in 2022, and Honda’s first in the top class since 2020. Yamamoto’s first words to Autosport web afterwards were that the team had given it everything. Final standings show Yamamoto and Makino on 85 points, Tsukakoshi and Nomura on 65 and Tsuboi and Yamashita on 62, with Kunimitsu taking the teams’ championship on 108 to 84 for Astemo Real Racing and 83 for au TOM’S. The standings remain provisional while TGR Team ENEOS Rookie’s appeal of its Saturday disqualification is pending, although no outcome of that appeal can move the #36 above the Hondas.

Toyota’s weekend ended with a second Supra thrown out of the results in as many days. Fenestraz and Yuhi Sekiguchi had brought the #39 DENSO KOBELCO SARD car from tenth on the grid to the final podium spot on the road, 0.275 seconds ahead of the Impul Nissan, but post-race inspection found a technical regulation breach and the car was disqualified in official notice No. 39. Sportscar365 reports the issue was the skid block, the same component that cost the #14 ENEOS Supra its second place on Saturday. The Impul Nissan of Kazuki Hiramine and Bertrand Baguette inherited third, which made the best classified Toyota the #38 KeePer Cerumo Supra of Toshiki Oyu and Rikuto Kobayashi in fourth, 22.130 seconds back, with the #14 of Nirei Fukuzumi and Kazuya Oshima fifth. The #37 Deloitte TOM’S car was ninth after serving a five-second penalty stop for an engine change made after Saturday’s race, and the #19 WedsSport Bandoh Supra was tenth after running off at Turn 2 on the opening lap.

In GT300, the title went to the #56 Kondo Racing Nissan GT-R of Joao Paulo de Oliveira and Iori Kimura, who climbed from 17th on the grid to fourth. The #96 K-tunes Lexus RC F GT3 of Morio Nitta and Shinichi Takagi, second in the standings after Saturday’s win and the only Toyota group car with a mathematical chance, lost it with a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pit lane and finished ninth. Toyota’s new GR GT3, running its second race as a non-scoring entry, was 24th and a lap down after two drive-throughs of its own, one for pit lane speed and one for refueling with the engine running. DailySportsCar’s report has the winning Honda leading 42 of the 53 laps.

The loss ends a run that had made au TOM’S the first team in GT500 history to win three championships in a row, in 2023, 2024 and 2025. Tsuboi arrived at Motegi seeking a fifth drivers’ title and Yamashita a fourth.

The Toyota Report Take

Honda earned this one. The Prelude was the faster car from midsummer, it won five races to Toyota’s two, and on Sunday Yamamoto and Makino did the only thing that was asked of them, which was to lead every lap that mattered. Toyota’s title defense came down to one car having to win from third with a slower package, and when that is the plan, a desperate lunge at the 90-degree corner is not a mistake so much as the plan playing out.

What should sting more in Toyota City is the scrutineering bay. Two GR Supras were excluded in two days for the same part, and one of those exclusions is now the subject of an appeal that could keep the final standings open for weeks. A championship that a Toyota team dominated for three years ended with the Supra’s name on the sheet twice for the wrong reasons, and that is a worse way to go out than being beaten on the road.

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