BMW's Farfus forced to skip Autopolis SUPER GT round

The Brazilian confirmed to Motorsport.com that he will be unable to take up his regular seat alongside Seiji Ara in the BMW Team Studie M4 GT3 on October 1-2.

It will mark the second race Farfus has missed this season following May’s third round of the season at Suzuka, with the team’s third driver Tsubasa Kondo set to deputise again.

Autopolis was always likely to prove a problematic race for Farfus owing to a three-way clash between SUPER GT, the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s Petit Le Mans finale and the curtain-closer of the GT World Challenge Europe season at Barcelona.

Farfus said a final decision on whether he’ll race at Road Atlanta for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing or at Barcelona for Rowe Racing hasn’t been made yet by BMW.

“Unfortunately it was such a late call with this visa situation, if we had known earlier we probably would have planned the season differently to allow me to do the full season [in SUPER GT],” Farfus told Motorsport.com.

“Suzuka we knew was always going to clash, but maybe the next race [Autopolis] could have been possible. Anyway, at the end of the day, it’s not my decision.”

Farfus’s best result in SUPER GT so far this year is the 12th place he and Ara earned last time out at Suzuka in August, which came after Farfus picked up a drive-through penalty for not respecting the grid formation at the start of the race.

Studie scored its first SUPER GT win as an independent outfit in the May Suzuka race, which Farfus was absent for due to a clash with the Nurburgring 24 Hours.

Ara and Kondo remain sixth in the standings on the strength of that victory, 17 points behind GT300 points leaders Joao Paulo de Oliveira and Kiyoto Fujinami.

Farfus and Ara will start 10th on the grid for Sunday’s sixth round of the season at Sugo.