Dunlop has spent the last decade supplying tires only to the Nakajima Honda roster in the GT500 after SARD Lexus switched to Michelin (and later to Bridgestone) in 2011, demonstrating its ability to develop new tires over the other three manufacturers in and testing severely affected the class.
Due to improved performance in recent years, another Honda roster, Mugen, has reached an agreement to ride Dunlop rubber from 2021, ending its four-year relationship with Yokohama.
However, Dunlop is not satisfied with just bringing two teams together in the top category and is looking at how it can build capacity for another car, even if that means reducing its presence in the G300 class, which is currently five of four tires to tires are supplied by different manufacturers.
“We want at least one [more] Team, ”Yasuda, Dunlop Japan Motorsport Director, told Motorsport.com. “But more than that would cause us capacity problems. So we have to think about it. [Seven cars across two classes] is already a lot of us. We are very close to the limit.
“First we have to think about how we can increase capacity, but if we can’t, we may have to reduce GT300 supply.”
Dunlop made great strides in one lap last year, with Nakajima Racing leading the qualifying at both Suzuka and Motegi – the first pole positions in this category since 2012. In fact, Takuya Izawa and Hiroki Otsu reached the second part of qualifying overall the four Fuji laps of the 2020 season.
The racing pace, however, remained a weakness for both Dunlop and the Nakajima team. Izawa and Otsu only achieved one podium all season and ended up outside the top 10 of the championship.
A similar trend was observed at this year’s start of the championship in Okayama. The two Dunlop-shod Hondas were the only cars from the Sakura-based manufacturer to break into the second quarter before fading in the race, landing the flag on the 11th (Mugen) and 13th (Nakajima).
Yasuda says the team is now increasing their efforts to improve their long-term pace after showing they can measure up to the top runners in qualifying.
“We immediately had the feeling that the two cars work well together and that the speed of development has increased significantly,” said Yasuda.
“Last year we were strong in qualifying, but not in the race. So this year we focused on improving longevity. We did several constructions and we put that into this race. We had three connections for this race, we chose medium and difficult.
“If we’d used the soft, we would probably have gotten a pole easily [at Okayama]. But considering we used hard links, I think P6 and P7 are a good result [in qualifying]. Now we’re much more focused on racing performance [than good results in qualifying]. “
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