Delve a little deeper and you’ll figure out just why Super GT is so popular. It has a great relationship with its fans. Aside from the usual autograph sessions, spectators are also invited for pit-walks and onto the pre-race starting grid, so they can get up close to the cars and meet the drivers. Parents concerned about the crowds can enter the ‘GT Kids Walk’, a special pit walk just for families, where the youngsters can also meet numerous mascots. Other child-friendly facilities to keep the youngsters entertained include a play area and sideline shows at the ‘Super GT Official Stage’. Amongst the various retailer stalls there was even a mobile chiropractic clinic to treat weary fans!
On top of all that, there is the whole ‘Race Queen’ phenomenon and ‘Circuit Safari’. Race Queens might at first glance appear to be normal grid girls. But these young ladies are genuine celebrities in their own right (there are even magazines dedicated to them!) and seem to attract just as much attention as the drivers. During the pit walk, fans take on the role of paparazzi as the girls – skimpily dressed in team colours – pose for pictures in front of their team’s car. From a Western perspective it seems a little on the sexist side, but while the attention mainly comes from the males, the ladies also have their fair share female fans too. The Race Queens seem more like team ambassadors than disposable ‘rent-a-model’s and are really seen as being part of their respective teams.
If Race Queens seem like a strange concept, ‘Circuit Safari’ is an even odder (and more brilliant) idea. Just as you can board a coach and ride on it through a safari park to watch the animals in their own environment, so too you can purchase a ticket to ride on a bus around the circuit, while the racing cars scream past you. That’s right. During a special session, several lucky busloads of spectators can share the track with their heroes, and experience being up-close to the cars in their ‘natural habitat’! Unthinkable in Europe.
All this love for the fans is well and truly returned come race day. If their commitment on Saturday’s washout was impressive, the sheer numbers and noise of Sunday’s crowd was overwhelming. Flag waving, chanting and drumming gave the grandstand on the start/finish straight an atmosphere more akin to a football field than a GT race, made all the more intense given that qualifying also had to be squeezed into an already packed schedule.
After a gruelling 300km of wheel-to-wheel racing, under the constant threat of more rain, Kazuki Nakajima and James Rossiter in the Petronas Tom’s SC430 Lexus took the top step of the podium. But Japanese motorsport was surely the real winner here.
– Shots courtesy of Motion Captured
