Suzuka 10 Hours

 

The Suzuka 1000km was first held as a standalone event on 26 June 1966. It was one of three long-distance endurance races held at Suzuka during the 1960s, alongside the Suzuka 500km and Suzuka 12 Hours.

The race went on hiatus from 1974 until 1979 as a consequence of the 1970s energy crisis, but returned in 1980 as a non-championship endurance race. In 1981, the Suzuka 1000km was held in the fourth weekend of August for the first time. With the exception of the 1989 race that was delayed to December due to inclement weather, the Suzuka 1000km and Suzuka 10 Hours would continue to take place in the fourth weekend of August every year through its most recent running in 2019.

From 1983 to 1991, the Suzuka 1000km was part of the All Japan Endurance Championship (renamed to the All Japan Sports Prototype Championship in 1987).^[1] In 1992, the race was added to the FIA World Sportscar Championship calendar, but the series folded at the end of the 1992 season, which meant that the 1993 race would be run as a non-championship round.

In 1994, the Suzuka 1000km became part of the inaugural BPR Global GT Series calendar. Pokka became the new title sponsor of the race, known as the Pokka 1000km. The Pokka 1000km continued as a championship round of the BPR Global GT Series' successor, the FIA GT Championship, from 1997 to 1998.

When the race was dropped from the FIA GT Championship calendar in 1999, the Pokka 1000km reverted to a non-championship endurance race. Through 2005 the Pokka 1000km was open to GT500 and GT300 cars from the All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship (JGTC), as well as cars from the Super Taikyu Series.

On 12 August 2005, it was announced that the race would become part of the newly-renamed Autobacs Super GT Series championship, beginning in 2006.^[2][3] Upon its inclusion, the Suzuka 1000km became the longest and most prestigious event on the Super GT calendar during this time period, and also paid the most championship points of any round on the calendar. Due to the effects of the Great Recession in Japan, the race was shortened to 700 kilometres from 2009 to 2010, and the race was renamed to the Pokka GT Summer Special. A second national crisis, the Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, led to the event being shortened further to 500 kilometres in 2011. The original 1000 kilometre distance was restored from 2012.

On 4 March 2017, it was announced that the GT Association (GTA) and Stephane Ratel Organisation (SRO) would join forces to promote a new ten-hour endurance race for FIA-GT3 and JAF-GT300 (now GTA-GT300) sports cars, the Suzuka 10 Hours. The 46th annual Suzuka 1000km, held that year as part of the Super GT Series, would be the last edition of the Suzuka Summer Endurance Race in its original format. The Suzuka 10 Hours became part of the 2018 Intercontinental GT Challenge championship, replacing the Sepang 12 Hours held in Malaysia.^[4]

The reformatted event attracted top teams and drivers from international GT3 racing, as well as teams from Super GT and Super Taikyu, by offering a ¥100,000,000 prize purse with the overall winner receiving ¥30,000,000. In 2019, Japanese banking company SMBC and collector car auction house BH Auction became the new joint title sponsors of the Suzuka 10 Hours.^[5]

The 2020 Suzuka 10 Hours, which had originally been scheduled for 23 August, was one of numerous motorsports events that were cancelled in the wake of the 2019-20 COVID-19 pandemic and the travel enacted in Japan during this time.^[6] The race was set to return on 22 August 2021, but with strict travel restrictions still in place during the pandemic, the 2021 race was also cancelled.^[7]

The Suzuka 10 Hours has not been scheduled to return to the Intercontinental GT Challenge calendar in the years since, meaning that the 2019 race. As recently as 2023, Stephane Ratel has expressed a desire to return to Suzuka in the near future.^[8] Its place as the Asian round of the calendar has since been taken by the Gulf 12 Hours at Yas Marina Circuit from 2022 to 2023.

Meanwhile, due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan, the Super GT Series was also forced to overhaul its calendar in 2020. The series scheduled two 300 kilometre races at Suzuka that year, including one on 23 August, the date originally scheduled for the Suzuka 10 Hours.^[9] Super GT originally scheduled just one 300km race at Suzuka for May 2021, but due to a surge in COVID-19 cases in the region, the race was moved back to 22 August, again taking over the date originally scheduled for the Suzuka 10 Hours.^[10] During the 2021 event, GTA Chairman Masaaki Bandoh expressed his desire to revive the Suzuka 1000km as a Super GT championship round.^[11] As of 2023, there have been no concrete plans to revive the original 1000km race.

Since 2022, Super GT has scheduled a 450 kilometre race at Suzuka on the fourth weekend of August, though in 2024, the summer race at Suzuka will move to the first weekend of September.^[12] These shorter races are not considered part of the lineage of the previous Suzuka 1000km and Suzuka 10 Hours.

Among drivers, Kunimitsu Takahashi holds the all-time record with four overall victories at the Suzuka 1000 km, winning for the first time in 1973, then taking three more victories during the Group C era of the JSPC in 1984, 1985, and 1989. Five other drivers - Daisuke Ito, Ryo Michigami, Naoki Nagasaka, Sébastien Philippe, and Juichi Wakisaka, have won the event three times overall.

Several past winners of the race have also won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, including Henri Pescarolo, Vern Schuppan, Masanori Sekiya, Stanley Dickens, Yannick Dalmas, Derek Warwick, JJ Lehto, Benoît Tréluyer, Loïc Duval, and Kazuki Nakajima. Past winners including Marcel Tiemann, Bernd Schneider, Frédéric Makowiecki, Maro Engel, Kelvin van der Linde, Dries Vanthoor, and Frédéric Vervisch have also won the Nürburgring 24 Hour race. Other notable former winners include three-time 24 Hours of Daytona winner Bob Wollek, 1989 Japanese Grand Prix winner Alessandro Nannini, 2015 FIA World Endurance Drivers' Champion and Formula One Grand Prix winner Mark Webber, four-time Super GT GT500 Drivers' Champion Ronnie Quintarelli, all-time GT500 class wins leader Tsugio Matsuda, and 2018 and 2020 Japanese "double champion" Naoki Yamamoto.

In recent years, the event has drawn interest from previous Formula One world champion drivers, many of whom had raced at Suzuka Circuit for years during their F1 careers. 2009 champion Jenson Button made his Super GT debut in the 2017 running of the Suzuka 1000 km, and in 2019, two-time world champion Mika Häkkinen returned to compete at the Suzuka 10 Hours.

Porsche have more victories in the race than any manufacturer - eleven in total, spanning from 1967 to 1994. The most successful Japanese marques are Honda and Toyota, who have each won the race eight times overall, just ahead of Nissan with seven victories. Toyota's Lexus luxury brand has also won the race five times representing Toyota in the GT500 class of Super GT, from 2006 to 2017.

Year	Overall Winner(s)	Entrant	Car	Series	Length
1966	Sachio Fukuzawa [ja]   Tomohiko Tsutsumi [ja]		Toyota 2000GT	Non-championship	1000 km	[13]
1967	Shintaro Taki [ja]   Kenjiro Tanaka [ja]		Porsche 906			[14]
1968	Sachio Fukuzawa [ja]   Hiroshi Fushida		Toyota 7			[15]
1969	Tomohiko Tsutsumi [ja]   Jiro Yoneyama		Porsche 906			[16]
1970	Kawakami Nishino   Koji Fujita		Nissan Fairlady Z432			[17]
1971	Yoshimasa Kawaguchi   Hiroshi Fushida		Porsche 910			[18]
1972	Harukuni Takahashi [ja]   Kenichi Takeshita		Toyota Celica 1600GT-R			[19]
1973	Kunimitsu Takahashi   Kenji Tohira		Nissan Fairlady Z432R			[20]
1974 – 1979	Not held
1980	Hironobu Tatsumi   Naoki Nagasaka	Red Carpet Racing Team	March 75S-Mazda	Non-championship	1000 km	[21]
1981	Bob Wollek   Henri Pescarolo	Porsche Kremer Racing	Porsche 935 K3			[22]
1982	Fumiyasu Sato   Naoki Nagasaka	Auto Beaurex Motor Sports	BMW M1			[23]
1983	Naohiro Fujita   Vern Schuppan	Trust Racing Team	Porsche 956	All-Japan Endurance Championship		[24]
1984	Kunimitsu Takahashi   Kenji Takahashi   Geoff Lees	Advan Sport Team Nova	Porsche 956			[25]
1985	Kunimitsu Takahashi   Kenji Takahashi	Advan Sport Team Nova	Porsche 962C			[26]
1986	Jiro Yoneyama   Hideki Okada   Tsunehisa Asai	FromA Racing	Porsche 956			[27]
1987	Geoff Lees   Masanori Sekiya   Hitoshi Ogawa	Toyota Team TOM's	Toyota 87C	All-Japan Sports Prototype Championship		[28]
1988	Hideki Okada   Stanley Dickens	FromA Racing	Porsche 962C			[29]
1989	Kunimitsu Takahashi   Stanley Dickens	Advan Alpha Nova Racing	Porsche 962C			[30]
1990	Kazuyoshi Hoshino   Toshio Suzuki	Nissan Motorsports	Nissan R90CP			[31]
1991	Roland Ratzenberger   Pierre-Henri Raphanel   Naoki Nagasaka	Toyota Team SARD	Toyota 91C-V			[32]
1992	Derek Warwick   Yannick Dalmas	Peugeot Talbot Sport	Peugeot 905 Evo 1B	FIA World Sportscar Championship		[33]
1993	Takao Wada   Toshio Suzuki	Team LeMans	Nissan R92CP	Non-championship		[34]
1994	Jean-Pierre Jarier   Bob Wollek   Jesús Pareja	Larbre Competition	Porsche 911 Turbo S LM-GT	BPR Global GT Series		[35]
1995	Ray Bellm   Maurizio Sandro Sala   Masanori Sekiya	GTC Racing	McLaren F1 GTR-BMW			[36]
1996	Ray Bellm   James Weaver   JJ Lehto	Gulf Racing GTC	McLaren F1 GTR-BMW			[37]
1997	Alessandro Nannini   Marcel Tiemann	AMG-Mercedes	Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR	FIA GT Championship		[38]
1998	Bernd Schneider   Mark Webber	AMG-Mercedes	Mercedes-Benz CLK LM			[39]
1999	Osamu Nakako   Ryo Michigami   Katsutomo Kaneishi	Mugen x Dome Project	Honda NSX GT500	Non-championship		[40]
2000	Juichi Wakisaka   Katsutomo Kaneishi   Daisuke Ito	Mugen x Dome Project	Honda NSX GT500			[41]
2001	Hironori Takeuchi   Yuji Tachikawa   Shigekazu Wakisaka	Toyota Team Cerumo	Toyota Supra GT500			[42]
2002	Juichi Wakisaka   Akira Iida   Shigekazu Wakisaka	Esso Toyota Team LeMans	Toyota Supra GT500			[43]
2003	Ryo Michigami   Sébastien Philippe	Dome Racing Team	Honda NSX GT500			[44]
2004	Ryo Michigami   Sébastien Philippe   Daisuke Ito	Dome Racing Team	Honda NSX GT500			[45]
2005	André Couto   Ronnie Quintarelli   Hayanari Shimoda	Denso Toyota Team SARD	Toyota Supra GT500			[46]
2006	Benoît Tréluyer   Kazuki Hoshino   Jérémie Dufour [fr]	Calsonic Team Impul	Nissan Fairlady Z GT500	Super GT Series		[47]
2007	André Lotterer   Juichi Wakisaka   Oliver Jarvis	Houzan Toyota Team TOM's	Lexus SC430 GT500			[48]
2008	Tsugio Matsuda   Sébastien Philippe	Calsonic Team Impul	Nissan GT-R GT500			[49]
2009	Hiroaki Ishiura   Kazuya Oshima	Lexus Team Kraft	Lexus SC430 GT500		700 km	[50]
2010	Ralph Firman   Yuji Ide   Takashi Kobayashi	Autobacs Racing Team Aguri	Honda HSV-010 GT GT500			[51]
2011	Takashi Kogure   Loïc Duval	Weider Honda Racing	Honda HSV-010 GT GT500		500 km	[52]
2012	Masataka Yanagida   Ronnie Quintarelli	MOLA International	Nissan GT-R GT500		1000 km	[53]
2013	Frédéric Makowiecki   Naoki Yamamoto	Weider Modulo Dome Racing	Honda HSV-010 GT GT500			[54] [55]
2014	Kazuki Nakajima   James Rossiter	Lexus Team Petronas TOM's	Lexus RC F GT500			[56] [57]
2015	Daisuke Ito   James Rossiter	Lexus Team Petronas TOM's	Lexus RC F GT500			[58] [59]
2016	Yuji Tachikawa   Hiroaki Ishiura	Lexus Team ZENT Cerumo	Lexus RC F GT500			[60] [61]
2017	Bertrand Baguette   Kosuke Matsuura	Nakajima Racing	Honda NSX-GT GT500			[62] [63]
2018	Maro Engel   Raffaele Marciello   Tristan Vautier	Mercedes-AMG Team GruppeM Racing	Mercedes-AMG GT3	Intercontinental GT Challenge	1603 km 996 mi (10 hours)	[64]
2019	Kelvin van der Linde   Dries Vanthoor   Frédéric Vervisch	Audi Sport Team WRT	Audi R8 LMS Evo		1556 km 967 mi (10 hours)	[65]
2020 – 2021	Not held due to the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic

• 1966–93: Suzuka 1000 km
• 1994–08: International Pokka 1000 km
• 2009–12: Pokka GT Summer Special
• 2013: International Pokka Sapporo 1000 km
• 2014–17: International Suzuka 1000 km
• 2018: Suzuka 10 Hours
• 2019: SMBC BH Auction Suzuka 10 Hours