Same two drivers, same result. Naoki Yamamoto and Tadasuke Makino won the Autopolis GT 3 Hours again on 18 October 2026, this time in the #100 STANLEY HRC PRELUDE-GT, one year after they won the same race in a Civic Type R-GT.
It is also the fourth GT500 win in a row for Honda’s new Prelude-GT. And it puts the #100 crew right back in the title fight, with two races left.
Quick facts
- Race: SUPER GT Round 7, AUTOPOLIS GT 3Hours RACE, Autopolis circuit, Oita, Japan
- Date: Sunday 18 October 2026, sunny and dry
- GT500 winner: #100 STANLEY HRC PRELUDE-GT (Team Kunimitsu), Naoki Yamamoto and Tadasuke Makino, 98 laps
- Second: #38 KeePer CERUMO GR Supra (Toshiki Oyu and Rikuto Kobayashi), 1.363 seconds behind
- Third: #23 MOTUL Niterra Z (Katsumasa Chiyo and Mitsunori Takaboshi), 7.972 seconds behind
- Grid: the #100 started 4th, the pole-sitting #64 Modulo Prelude-GT finished 12th
- GT300 winner: #96 K-tunes RC F GT3 (Morio Nitta and Shinichi Takagi)
- Next: two races at Mobility Resort Motegi, 7 and 8 November
From fourth on the grid to a second Autopolis win
Honda filled the front row on Saturday. Riki Okusa and Igor Fraga put the #64 Modulo car on pole with a 1:32.414, and the #17 Astemo car was second. The #100 lined up fourth, behind the #19 WedsSport Supra, the only GT500 car on Yokohama tyres.
Three hours later, both front-row cars were far from the podium. The #64 came home 12th, and the #17 finished 14th, two laps down. The #100 took the flag first, with Oyu and Kobayashi’s Supra only 1.363 seconds behind.
Last year Yamamoto and Makino won this race from 12th on the grid. Back then Makino did a long middle stint, Team Kunimitsu kept him in the car at the second stop, and they won by 25.9 seconds. Winning the same three-hour race two years in a row, in two different cars, says a lot about how well this team knows Autopolis.
Prelude-GT: four wins in a row
2026 is the first season for the HRC Prelude-GT, which replaced the Civic Type R-GT as Honda’s GT500 car. Its first win came at the Fuji GT 300 km race on 2 August, and the drivers were Yamamoto and Makino again.
Since then a Prelude-GT has won every round. The #16 ARTA Mugen car won at Suzuka, the #17 Astemo car won at Sugo in September, and now the #100 has won at Autopolis.
For road car fans, the name is the fun part. The Prelude came back in 2025 as a hybrid coupe, and Honda put that shape on its GT500 racer. Under the body, though, a GT500 car is a pure racing machine with a 2.0-litre turbo four-cylinder engine, so the race car shares the Prelude’s name and look, not its hybrid system.
The title fight goes to Motegi
The points leaders are Sho Tsuboi and Kenta Yamashita in the #36 au TOM’S GR Supra. They started eighth and finished eighth. The Japanese edition of motorsport.com reports that the car got a penalty during the race.
Before Autopolis, the #36 pair had 58 points, Koudai Tsukakoshi and Yuto Nomura (#17) had 45, and Yamamoto and Makino had 38, according to the AUTOSPORT web ranking after Sugo. With a win for the #100 and only eighth place for the #36, the gap between them is now much smaller, and the #17 crew scored no points. The official standings after Autopolis were not out yet when we wrote this.
Yamamoto already knows how to win this title. He was GT500 champion with Team Kunimitsu in 2018 with Jenson Button, and in 2020 with Makino.
GT300: a Lexus win and a GT-R on the podium
In GT300, Morio Nitta and Shinichi Takagi won in the #96 K-tunes RC F GT3, the car’s first win of the season. The #666 seven x seven Porsche was second, and the #360 RUNUP × SOL GT-R took third.
Subaru fans had their moment on Saturday. The #61 SUBARU BRZ R&D SPORT took pole, and Hideki Yamauchi’s lap gave him his 18th career Super GT pole, a new all-time record.
Our take
This is our opinion: the Prelude-GT is now the car to beat. Four wins in a row, shared by three different teams, means the car is fast in more than one pair of hands. And when the race lasts three hours at Autopolis, the #100 crew have now found the right answer two years running.
The bad side for Honda is that its wins are spread over three teams, so no Honda crew has run away with the points, and the leader is still a Toyota. The #36 Supra scored again on a day with a penalty, and points on the bad days are what win titles. With the gap now small and two 250 km races left at Motegi, the finale should be tense.
Your turn
Can Yamamoto and Makino beat the #36 au TOM’S Supra at Motegi, or will Toyota hold on to the title? Tell us in the comments.
Sources: AUTOSPORT web (Round 7 Autopolis race results, 18 Oct 2026), SUPER GT official site, Dailysportscar (Autopolis qualifying), AUTOSPORT web (GT500 ranking after Sugo), Honda Racing (Sugo race report), Dailysportscar (Autopolis preview), Wikipedia (Naoki Yamamoto),Dailysportscar (first Prelude-GT win, Fuji), Sportscar365 (Autopolis 2025).
Photos: Savers Liner (CC0), Aos.1905 (CC BY-SA 4.0), Abarabone1206 (CC BY 4.0), Morio (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Bobo12345 (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons. The Prelude-GT photos show Honda’s show car, not the #100 race car. The #100 STANLEY photo is from 2024, when the team raced the Civic Type R-GT.
