The International Suzuka 500 km, was the opening round of the 1985 All Japan Endurance Championship, which was held at the Suzuka Circuit, on 7 April, in front of a crowd of approximately 23,000.
Report
Entry A total of 30 cars were entered for the event, across four classes ranging from Modified Hatchbacks to Group C Prototypes.
Qualifying The pairing of Kunimitsu Takahashi and Kenji Takahashi took pole position for Advan Sports Nova, in their Porsche 962C ahead of the European partnership of Geoff Lees and Eje Elgh for the Dome Motorsport Team, by just 0.07secs.
Race The race was held over 85 laps of the Suzuka circuit, a distance of 500 km (actual distance was 502.690 km). Lees and Elgh took the winner spoils for the Dome Motorsport team, in their Dome-Toyota 84C. The pair won in a time of 3hr 35:59.060 mins., averaging a speed of 87.273 mph. Second place went to Kazuyoshi Hoshino and Akira Hagiwara in the Hoshino Racing March-Nissan 83G who were the only other finisher to complete the full race distance. One lap adrift in third was the Porsche of Kunimitsu Takahashi and Kenji Takahashi.
Classification
Class Winners are in Bold text.
Pos. No. Class Driver Entrant Car - Engine Time, Laps Reason Out 1st 38 D Geoff Lees Eje Elgh Dome Motorsport Dome-Toyota 84C 3:35:59.060 2nd 28 D Kazuyoshi Hoshino Akira Hagiwara Hoshino Racing March-Nissan 83G 3:38.10.800 3rd 25 D Kunimitsu Takahashi Kenji Takahashi Advan Sports Porsche 962C 84 4th 1 D Vern Schuppan Keiichi Suzuki Trust Porsche 956B 83 5th 26 D Keiji Matsumoto Osamu Nakako Panasport Japan LM-Nissan 04C 82 6th 62 D Kazuo Mogi Naoki Nagasaka Auto Beaurex Motorsport Lotec-BMW M1C 80 7th 27 D Jirou Yoneyama Hideki Okada From A RacingPorsche 956 80 8th 86 C Yoshimi Katayama Yojiro Terada Mazdaspeed Mazda 737C 79 9th 45 B Makio Nonaka First Morlding Collage-Mazda FM45 77 10th 16 B Ichirou Mizuno Taidou Hashimoto Manatee-Mazda Mk.IV 76 11th 67 B Tsuguo Ooba Katsuaki Satou Yamato Honda Ballade CR-X 73 12th 33 B Keiichi Mizutani Hiroyuki Kondou West-Mazda 83S II 71 13th31 B Nobuyoshi Horii Kenji Abe Horii Racing West-Mazda 83S II 71 14th 8 B Masaharu Kinoshita West-Mazda 83S 71 15th 6 B Akihiro Masuda West-Mazda 83S II 70 16th 15 A Shigehito Hirabayashi Hideki Iida Ogawa Nissan Sunny 69 17th 9 B Syuuji Fujii West-Mazda 83S II 68 18th 18 A Kiyotaka Nonomura Mitsuo Yamamoto Nissan Sunny 67 19th 21 B Yukinobu Mizutani Yoshinori Sakurai Manatee-Mazda Mk.IV 67 20th 88 C Norismaka Sakamoto Takayuki Imadu Top Fuel Racing Mazda RX-7 845 66 21st 10 B Nobuyuki Saka Nobuo Naka Ishida Racing West-Mazda 83S II 65 22nd 2 C Chiyomi Totani Noritake Takahara Alpha Cubic Racing Team Renoma-BMW 84C 57 DNF DNF 11 D Masahiro Hasemi Takao Wada Hasemi Motorsport LM-Nissan 04C 51 DNF 5 B Masami Fujita Ken Mizokawa Meiwa Honda Civic 51 DNF 20 D Haruhito Yanagida Aguri Suzuki Central 20 Racing Team LM-Nissan 04C 34 fuel DNF 55 B Tooru Hirano Hirofumi Nishi West-Mazda 83S II 32 DNF 37 B Tetsuya Kasai Kouji Satou Manatee-Mazda Mk.IV 30 DNF 36 D Satoru Nakajima Masanori Sekiya TOM's TOM's-Toyota 85C 23 Engine DNF 29 B Norihiro Takeda Shinji Yamamoto West-Mazda 83S II 15 DNF 77 A Yasumi Fukao Kouichi Nishikawa Nissan Sunny 1
References