FIRST VICTORY OF THE SEASON FOR THE LEXUS LC 500 AT FUJI HOME TRACK

The ZENT CERUMO LC 500 No. 38 co-piloted by Yuji TACHIKAWA & Hiroaki ISHIURAI achieved victory for the first time this season at the 2019 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series at Fuji International Speedway.

The Fuji GT 500km race, Round 2 of the 2019 AUTOBACS SUPER GT series, took place at Fuji Speedway in Shizuoka Prefecture on May 4th. Rain began to fall just before the race’s start and then stronger rain in the early going caused the race to be halted for a time. When the weather improved to allow a restart, what followed was exciting racing throughout that finally ended with a GT500 class victory for the No. 38 ZENT CERUMO LC500 (Yuji Tachikawa/Hiroaki Ishiura).

“It was a battle we could not lose with concentration from beginning to end, and overall it was a good race”, Yuji Tachikawa commented. “This season, we implemented a new structure in our team. There is a new responsibility for me and also pressure that we really need to win. We finished with a tough result for the first race, and TRD and the team made huge efforts, so we raced with a new mind set: where else could we win if we don’t win Fuji! We are happy we realized this. In yesterday’s qualifying, we could not choose the right tires and started in the middle of the grid. We had no idea what was going to happen in the rain, but it was good that we were able to come into the front at the beginning. After the track became dry, we had to concentrate until the very end to race with our rivals.”

This victory marked the first win of the No. 38 ZENT CERUMO LC500 since the 2017 Round 2 race at Fuji, as well as the 19th career win for Yuji Tachikawa and the 6th for Hiroaki Ishiura.

This season, Lexus is represented by 6 teams running LC 500 in the GT500 Class of the Super GT championship, and 3 teams running RC F GT3 in the GT300 Class.