First test of new fuel in Super GT

The commercial promise is not purely semantic: the Super GT will indeed use a fuel of non-fossil and carbon-neutral origin to power all the cars on its grid next season. The 14 GT500s and 9 GT300s on its grid have already tested the famous “ETS Racing Fuel” composed and manufactured by Haltermann Carless in Germany.

Comparisons with historic standard fuel have already been carried out on track, the best lap of this Motegi test session, achieved by the No. 500 Nissan Z GT23, being 1'37"285 against 1'36"390 by this same car during qualifying two days earlier. In the GT300 category, the No. 4 BMW M3 GT7 clocked 1'46"766 compared to 1'45"938 in qualifying.

Among the pilots, the comments were mainly positive. “ To tell the truth, I haven't had any uncomfortable feelings with this fuel as to the throttle response I'm looking for, told us Ronnie Quintarelli, starter in the No. 23 Nissan. A GT500 has what one might call an “aggressively designed engine” with many advanced technologies applied. So I thought changing the fuel would cause significant changes, but in fact the changes were so small that I wouldn't have noticed them if I hadn't been informed of the fuel change. Of course, careful adaptations were made to the cartography, but nothing profound »

Même son de cloche chez Hiroaki Ishiura, pilote de la Toyota GR Supra GT500 n°38 : « I started cautiously, but didn't feel anything unusual or disturbing. I held off on power at first, but the only thing I felt was that the shift point is a little higher than it had been during the race, but nothing who doesn't bother me. » Ukyo Sasahara, of the No. 16 Honda NSX-GT, also had an opinion: “ I believe that at this stage, the settings are not perfect, and I have the impression that the power delivered is lower than with our normal gasoline. However, the feeling was more natural than I expected. But there are still many steps to take ". Finally, the comment from Seiji Ara, driver of the No. 4 BMW M3 GT7, was not useless: “ I tried things like adjusting the airflow in the cockpit, but I was still bothered by the smell of the exhaust. Additionally, compared to racing, I felt that there was less of a feeling of power when accelerating in the intermediate gears. I hope this will change with the adjustments we make to compensate for these effects, and as we are already talking with BMW Motorsport about all this right now, I think we will be able to put things right quickly. For the rest, there was no problem ».

The GT500s are real racing machines, and any change in their settings is not trivial. This is why this first session will allow engine manufacturers to refine their copy before the start of the 2023 school year.

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