Super GT got underway with round 1 this weekend and saw Lyons in action at the Okayama international circuit, Japan.

Much was expected from the new R8 of Audi Team Hitotsuyama, and the new machine showed flashes of great promise after its bumpy yet solid first performance of this years racing calendar. Although solid points were scored, Lyons and his team will be looking for more out of both their machine and themselves for Round 2 at Fuji Speedway in just under three weeks.

Richard Lyons:

“We had a fairly strong weekend after an initially tough start in free practice on Saturday morning.
A mechanical problem with the gearbox meant we only got a few runs in before qualifying and meant we weren’t able to fine tune our set up for the optimum lap time. My team mate Fujii didn’t get to drive at all in free practice, so his qualifying performance was impressive as it was his first laps of the weekend.

I netted us 6th in the final qualifying which is Audi Team Hitotsuyama’s best qualifying position to date. With that in mind we were looking good for a strong race performance.

We started the race off reasonably strong with Fujii taking the first stint, however after around 19 laps he radioed in to say he was having difficulty with his tires. Not long after he lost a lot of pace and was forced to pit earlier than our optimum strategy. A slow pit stop compounded our difficulties with an almost 35 second loss from the tires to the pit stop. I pitted out with 45 laps to do, and had a fight on my hands to get us back into the point scoring positions.

For the first 20 laps I had to conserve the tires as we didn’t need a repeat of the first stint, so I kept pace with the guys in front and once I was happy I could reach the finish I let rip and started carving through the field. I also managed to give the body work a little christening a long the way…..

It turned out to be one of my most enjoyable races as I got to pass many cars and perhaps make one of my best passes of all time.

I started the last lap 3 seconds off 7th place (the 2015 championship winning car), and from what I could see they were struggling with damaged tires. I got my head down and pushed like crazy. I got to his bumper with 3 corners to go and he went to the inside on the last corner to defend and I cruised down his outside and managed to hold it to get us a hard earned 7th place.

Lots learnt over the weekend and plenty of potential for the season ahead”