Three podiums for NSX GT3 Evo as Italian GT Championship begins

The NSX GT3 Evo 22 scored three more podium finishes last weekend including one in the Italian GT Championship for one of the JAS Motorsport Driver Development Programme’s newest members.
 
Italian GT Championship
The opening round of the Sprint Championship at Misano meant a pair of 50-minute races for Nova Race and its two-car line-up of NSX GT3 Evo 22s.
 
Aiming to repeat JAS Development Drivers’ Jacopo Guidetti & Leonardo Moncini’s Sprint title of 2022, teenager Axel Gnos was paired with team regular Matteo Greco in the Pro-Am category.
 
Gnos did an excellent job qualify second in class for Race One – an achievement matched by Greco for Sunday’s race – and then ran consistently through the opening stint as he and Greco finished second as well.
 
They added fifth in Race Two and hold third in the Pro-Am standings with one round complete.
 
In the #77 car, Team Principal Luca Magnoni had a new co-driver for 2023 in teenager Andrea Bodellini. The duo qualified second in Am for both races and then finished there too after an ultra- consistent weekend.
 
Super GT
Having won the opening race of the season at Okayama, Team UPGARAGE duo Takashi Kobayashi & Syun Koide were forced to carry the maximum 60kg success weight aboard their NSX GT3 Evo 22 at Fuji’s annual ‘Golden Week’ race on Thursday.
 
This limited the duo to 15th in the GT300 class in qualifying, but the pair were making solid progress when they sustained a puncture that damaged the car’s suspension and put them out; a result that dropped them back to third in the points table.
 
The Yogibo Racing car of Yugo Iwasawa and Reimi Ito was another to qualify in the lower half of the grid – due in no small part to 24kg success weight. But the speed of the NSX in race trim was apparent as they climbed from 23rd to 15th by the finish.
 
All four cars were competing as part of the NSX GT3 Customer Racing Programme; a global collaborative project with JAS Motorsport responsible for assembly of all cars.
 
Honda Performance Development (HPD) and M-TEC handle sales and technical support in North America and Japan respectively, with JAS responsible for these areas across the rest of the world.

Main Axel Gnos/Matteo Greco, Nova Race Honda NSX GT3 Evo 22, Italian GT, Misano, Italy (credit: ACI Sport); Lower 1 Axel Gnos/Matteo Greco(L), Nova Race Honda NSX GT3 Evo 22, Italian GT, Misano, Italy (credit: ACI Sport); 2 Luca Magnoni/Andrea Bodellini, Nova Race Honda NSX GT3 Evo 22, Italian GT, Misano, Italy (credit: ACI Sport); 3(L) Takashi Kobayashi/Syun Koide, Team UPGARAGE Honda NSX GT3 Evo 22, Super GT, Fuji, Japan (credit: Honda Motor); (R) Yugo Iwasawa/Reimei Ito, Yogibo Racing Honda NSX GT3 Evo 22, Super GT, Fuji, Japan (credit: Honda Motor).

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