Despite being cut short to a 500km race, the championship's fifth round and a traditional mid-summer event, Pokka GT Summer Special, was still the longest race of the season. This year's version, however, didn't see the hot summer sun and an intermittent but persistent rain stayed throughout Saturday and Sunday, just like the previous Sugo round. The air temperature never reached 30 degrees Celsius during the weekend and it was unusually bearable weather for the event renowned by the murderous heat. The race itself was also hit by a broken weather, with showers several times, but ADVAN Kondo GT-R endured the difficult conditions to finish in tenth in the GT500 class, while R&D Sport Legacy B4 earned its first victory of the season in the GT300 class by an exciting last minutes overtaking.

Though the rain in the early morning had almost stopped, the warm up session on Sunday morning was run on the totally wet surfaces. The teams had headaches with regards to the tire choice, when the time to start the race was about to come, because the track was still very wet but the rain had already ceased. The two ADVAN equipped GT500 cars were shoed with heavy rain tires when they sat on the grids.

Bjorn Wirdheim, the starting driver of ADVAN Kondo GT-R, managed to overtake a SC430 (car no.38) at the exit of Turn 2 soon after the start and moved up to 11th. But, contrary to the team's prediction, the rain didn't come back and the track gradually became less wet. Wirdheim said, "The first two laps were good but it became difficult to keep the pace from around the third lap." So, with unsuitable tires, he was forced to give way to opponents and fell back to 12th on Lap 4, before losing two more positions on the next lap.

For the same reason, Tatsuya Kataoka at the wheel of WedsSport ADVAN SC430 similarly struggled and was running in 15th with patience. Then the team made an early driver change, Kataoka to Seiji Ara, on Lap 19 but it didn't improve the situation much and Ara's pace was rather getting worse.

Meanwhile, Wirdheim never gave up and drove ADVAN Kondo GT-R for 29 laps, before changing to Hironobu Yasuda. The Japanese driver started the second stint with the fresh rain tires but his pace stagnated too and was lapped by the race leader in the middle stage, as WedsSport ADVAN SC430 was around the same time.

But the Kondo's team kept on trying and put slick tires on the car, as one of the earliest to do so, when it made the second pit stop for the final stint. From then on, Wirdheim drove in a really good pace and fought for tenth with a HSV-010 (car no.32), even thought they were a lap down from the leader. On Lap 77, however, the two cars made contact at Degner Curve and the Honda spun off and halted off the track as a result. For this incident, a drive through penalty was given to ADVAN Kondo GT-R but eventually Wirdheim finished in tenth and brought back a valuable championship point.

WedsSport ADVAN SC430 even tried the intermediate rain tires during Ara's stint, as the car was already lapped and nothing to lose, but the gamble didn't pay off. For the final stint, Kataoka chose slick and tried to recover the lost ground but three laps from the leader were way too long to make up. Thus he finished in 11th and narrowly missed adding a point.

In the GT300 class, Kota Sasaki driving R&D Sport Legacy B4 kept the third position at the start and immediately began to put pressure on the Porsche (car no.33) in front of him. On Lap 4, he made an attack on the opponent at Ess curves and got ahead of it. Then Sasaki soon started to close the gap with the race leading Garaiya (car no.43).

These top three cars were running on heavy rain tires from different tire manufacturers each other. In this battle, Sasaki's ADVAN shoed Legacy was clearly the fastest and, after becoming the new race leader on Lap 9, he easily pulled away from the other two.

On Lap 31, R&D Sport Legacy B4 made its first pit stop to change to Tetsuya Yamano. This temporarily handed the lead position to Hiroki Kato in Evangelion RT Test Type-01 Apple Shiden but, when Kato came in the pit on Lap 38 for driver change to Kazuho Takahashi, Yamano regained his position as the race leader. Soon after that, however, a GT500 car crashed and the Safety Car was called in, which meant the margin which Sasaki and Yamano had earned against their opponents came to nothing. But, when the racing resumed, the Subaru driver calmly began to build it again.

When the Legacy came back to the pit for the final driver change, the team chose the slick tires, as many of the opponents did, because the track surfaces were gradually drying. To the team's surprise, Sasaki was overtaken by the Porsche (car no.33) when he was still on his out lap after the pit stop, on Lap 58, but he soon regained his true pace and caught the tail of the Porsche seven laps later. It looked difficult for Sasaki to overtake the car in front, because the Porsche was faster on straightaway and he had to use the wet part of the track to make a move, but he made it at the first attempt on Lap 71 when the Subaru driver dove to the inside at 130R Corner to reclaim the lead position.

In the closing stage of the race, the rain started to fall again, which made Yamano and the R&D Sport team crew in the pit a little nervous, but Sasaki rather pulled away from the Porsche and secured the first victory in a year with their Legacy B4, since the last year's Suzuka round.

The pair of Atsushi Yogo and Manabu Orido in Rire Lamborghini RG-3 finished in third. The car was running in seventh just before the final pit stop and, on Lap 55, the team put the slick tires on their Lambo when Yogo changed to Orido. "That call was critical. And I could handed the car to Orido in a very good condition," said Yogo. As one of the first switchers to slicks, Orido managed to move up the field gradually and, on Lap 64, he finally came up to the third place which Orido kept until the checkered flag fell. It was the second podium finish of the season for the pair, since the Okayama round in May.

Fifth place went to Hatsune Miku Goodsmile BMW. Despite the car was given a drive through penalty for a pit work infringement, the gap with the fourth placed Ferrari (car no.11) at the finish was less than a second. If the race were only one lap longer, the Hatsune Miku car would have certainly overtaken the Ferrari which was its main rival in the fight for the championship leader.

　[Result : 10th in the GT500 class]
"Regarding our qualifying lap on the dry surfaces, other cars improved their times much more than we anticipated, probably because other tire manufacturers used the tires that were more focused on qualifying, which we didn't expected, so we weren't able to go to the Q2 session. But I think my drive was nearly perfect under the conditions. The race started on the wet surface and we thought we would have more rain after the start. But the amount of water on the track was less than we anticipated and it became the worst condition for us because we started the race with heavy rain tires.
"Either dry or wet, Suzuka is one of the very tough race tracks for tire, as the loads on the tires are very high. We were reasonably close to the race leaders when we used the dry tires which had been improved from the last year's version but we struggled when we ran on the wets. I couldn't believe it because our wet tires were good in the last race at Sugo... Fortunately, we will have testing sessions at Motegi and Autopolis before the next Fuji round. If we could find the right tires in the testings, we can use them at Fuji. I would just forget the wet race today and look forward."

　[Result : 1st in the GT300 class]
"It's really tough race. It's been a long time since we had such a difficult race last time, as we had to think so much about the weather, the track conditions, the tire choice and so on! But the team had prepared a very good car and it was so fast regardless of the conditions. Of course, ADVAN tires helped us very much under all conditions of the track surface.
"As for the battle with the Porsche in the closing stage, I thought I wouldn't need to take so much risk to get ahead of it. But their car was fast on the straightaway and the battle between us was really clean, so I just wanted to overtake the car fair and square. I was on a very good line at the exit of Spoon Curve on that lap but it was still very, very exciting to go into 130R side-by-side!"

"It's a shame that our GT500 cars had to fight an uphill battle. Because both of our cars didn't run in the Q2 session, we only ran on the dry surface in the qualifying session on Saturday and the warm up session on Sunday morning was the first opportunity for us to use the wet tires. At that time, we had already realized the rain tires we had for this race didn't suit to the conditions.
"We foresaw that more rain would come after the start of the race and that was the reason why we sent out both ADVAN Kondo GT-R and WedsSport ADVAN SC430 with the heavy rain tires. But actually the amount of rain became less than we expected. So our prediction was off the mark as a result...
"For the next race, our development program is progressing according to plan and we will have testings at Autopolis and Motegi. We expect to obtain some new data in the testing sessions. We are quite confident that we will have better tires in the Fuji round after a solid development work for it.
"In the GT300, the cars from other tire manufacturers sat on the front row but the actual winner of the class, R&D Sport Legacy B4, was in very good form throughout the weekend and consistently fast on both wet and dry surfaces. It was a shame that one of the leading ADVAN shoed cars was given a penalty but all our cars seemed to perform well under the conditions, considering the amount of rain.
"The performance of our GT300 tires was almost on target this time, I would say, because they didn't need the intermediate tires and the heavy wet with harder compounds could cover the broad track conditions."