How Impul’s “big risk” paid dividends in the wet at Sugo

Off the back of their win at Suzuka in August, Baguette and teammate Kazuki Hiramine arrived at Sugo in the lead of the championship and were expected to struggle as the only car in the GT500 field saddled with the power-sapping stage three fuel flow restrictor.

After the Calsonic-liveried Z qualified 14th, the rain came to the rescue of the Impul pair and opened the door for them to finish a strong fifth in a major boost to their title aspirations.

But such a result was only made possible by the team calling in starting driver Baguette to make an extra stop on lap 27 of 84 for fresh wet Bridgestone tyres, having already brought in the Belgian to switch to wets on lap 16.

At the time, Impul was the only car to have made two stops, and the timing of the second stop was just before the lap 28 one-third distance mark, at which point Hiramine would have been able to take over and go to the end of the race.

Instead, Baguette stayed on board until lap 50, when the track was dry enough for slicks, with his strong pace on his second set of wets enabling he and Hiramine to leapfrog their way up the order from last to score six crucial points for fifth.

“We used the wrong compound of wet tyre, so I had to pit for the right wet tyre,” Baguette told Motorsport.com. “I was losing so much time so we decided to make the extra stop. 

“Then we were counting on the track drying up, and it happened, because we knew if the track dried we had to make one more pitstop anyway for slicks. 

“When you’re in our position, you have to take a risk, and it was a big risk [to stop again] because we could have waited one more lap and changed to Kazuki. 

“I was just losing so much time so it didn’t make sense to wait any more. I was so slow, I couldn’t even turn the car properly, so I said ‘guys, we need to pit’. So that extra stop ended up being the key to come back like this.

“It was difficult to choose the right wet tyre because we basically have no data from previous seasons. But once we had the right tyre, the laptime was quite similar to the Michelin cars.”

Baguette's pace before and after second stop:

Despite Baguette’s speed, there was no way for he and Hiramine to challenge the two Michelin-shod NISMO-run Nissan Zs that locked out the top two positions in the first wet SUPER GT race in three years.

Victory for the NDDP Racing car of Katsumasa Chiyo and Mitsunori Takaboshi puts them in the lead of the championship with two races to go, 3.5 points ahead of the Impul crew.

 

But Baguette is confident that if the final two races at Autopolis and Motegi stay dry, he and Hiramine still have the potential to beat the factory-run car to the championship title.

“Of course Michelin is very strong in the wet, they are quite far ahead and we need to work on that, but I was pretty happy with the strategy,” said Baguette. “We didn’t do much wrong, Michelin was just much stronger. 

"Now for Autopolis and Motegi it’s going to be Michelin versus Bridgestone. It will be interesting who does the best job in terms of choosing tyres for the last two races. 

“Obviously if it rains Michelin has the advantage, but if it had been dry, the Michelin cars had a lot of pick-up, which we didn’t have. 

“We had a really bad qualifying but on race pace I think we were stronger, even with the restrictor. I think we have a pretty good chance.”

• Stream every qualifying session and race of the 2022 SUPER GT season only on Motorsport.tv.