Pacific Racing Team has undergone six name changes and as many manufacturers since debuting in 2010, but these produced modest at best stats for the midpack-to-backmarker operation crewed by students from Nakanihon Automotive College. Even the power of squids, cyborgs, school idols, VTubers, and tank crews could only yield two GT300 podiums across the first 17 years.

Turns out horse girls had UNLIMITED IMPACT that translates well to motorsports. Six of them were all it took to provide the VOLTAGE needed for Yusuke Tomibayashi and Yuta Fujiwara to become Legend-Changers.

2026 is the first year of a partnership between Pacific and Umamusume: Pretty Derby, the globally acclaimed media franchise about anthropomorphized Japanese racehorses. Series protagonist Special Week, Buena Vista, Maruzensky, Curren Chan, Rice Shower, and Winning Ticket—whose real-world counterparts share a lineage (the real Maruzensky was also appropriately nicknamed “Supercar”)—are prominently displayed on the sides of Pacific’s BMW M4 GT3 Evo.

While Pacific isn’t a contender most days, it has long stood out on the grid for collaborating with various IPs. Those that have appeared on the team’s cars include Squid Girl, Ghost in the Shell: Arise, Love Live!, Hololive and VSPO!, and THE iDOLM@STER; Love Live! and Girls und Panzer also sponsored Pacific’s D1 Grand Prix division in the mid-2010s. Such sponsorships obviously generate major funding, especially through merchandise, but the team also relies heavily on donations and personal sponsors.

Of course, an eye-grabbing livery doesn’t always mean fast cars. Prior to Sunday’s Suzuka 300km, the team’s best finish was third at Sepang in 2011 and Okayama in 2017. The 2026 season, the first with BMW, seemed to be more of the same as the #9 finished outside the top 20 at Okayama and the Fuji 3 Hours followed by 16th in the Fuji 300km.

It’s rather fitting, then, that Pacific finally achieved a breakthrough at Suzuka Circuit. Silence Suzuka, the iconic ’90s racehorse whose Umamusume counterpart serves the anime’s deuteragonist, got his crown name from the Suzuka Mountains that line the eponymous city and is a stone’s throw from the track. Suzuka herself isn’t on the #9, but there is poetry in the team starting from the pole at the course which shares a name with the horse best known for a front-running style.

Tomibayashi edged out D’station Racing, an ally of Pacific in 2020 (D’station general manager Kazuhiro Sasaki’s racehorses Verxina, Cheval Grand, and Vivlos are also in Umamusume), by just .004 in GT300 qualifying. That momentum carried into race day, where the view from the lead was theirs from start to finish: Fujiwara stayed in first throughout his stint before passing the car to Tomibayashi, who completed the flag-to-flag run.

Fujiwara explained in the post-race conference:

I couldn’t see the long-run pace from the start, so I was nervous at first. By the time we reached Lap 10 or 15, there was no drop in performance. The setup and tires were great and it made me confident that we could do it.

I was really struggling with my performance in Rounds 1 and 2 this year, but my teammates Tomibayashi and (Rintaro) Kubo and the entire Pacific Racing Team taught me and gave my advice. I was finally able to get to a speed where I could keep up with Tomibayashi.

I’ve been racing for Pacific Racing Team for the past three years. There were times where I caused trouble, but I think we’ve really grown together in many ways. The students at NAC have gotten faster at pit work each time, which puts pressure on us to get even faster. It’s encouraging and it feels like we’re all getting stronger together.

I think we’ve built something special here. We want to keep this momentum going, and I want us all to do what we can to make sure we don’t lose it and continue to get good results.

The milestone extended to partners too, as BMW and Michelin secured their first Super GT victories since Team Studie × CRS won at Suzuka with the same manufacturer and tire in 2023. BMW disappeared from Super GT in 2025 before returning with Pacific, while Michelin is in its final GT300 season before Dunlop becomes the category’s sole tire supplier in 2027.

Whereas Fujiwara is in his rookie season (he was a part-time driver in 2024 and 2025), Tomibayashi last appeared on a Super GT podium in 2022 when he was the GT300 runner-up at Suzuka. He joined Pacific in 2024.

Tomibayashi recalled:

When I was driving on the warm-up, I was feeling great. I figured I could get a good start and reassure everyone, but Fujiwara wanted to do it and I wanted him too. It was obvious that he was nervous. He was so tense that his hands and feet were moving together in sync. I was worried about him as a teammate and a friend, but his start was beautiful. He kept a strong pace and handled the mixed conditions calmly as he built the lead. In Q1, the car was fast and I felt the pressure, but I turned that into motivation. In the race, seeing him drive like that calmed me down.

Our team relies on students from Nakanihon Automotive College who do the tire changes and mechanical work. Coming in to pit, I never wannt to do the tire changes myself because the pressure would be too much. Gaining a second or two on track is incredibly difficult, but a small mistake while changing tires can cost you five to ten seconds. There was a lot of pressure, but they did an amazing pit stop. When we got back out, there was nobody in front of or behind me.

I made my GT debut in 2022. While my peers have won races and championships in other categories, and we raced against them too, I just couldn’t seem to get results in GT. I honestly felt really frustrated by this for a long time, but I just focused on driving as fast as I could, wanting to prove that I could hold my own against the best. I wanted to prove that the car and the Michelin tires provided had the potential to be number one. With that in mind, I just drove fast.

Super GT is Japan’s top category, and there are a lot of difficult aspects to it but everyone is giving their all. I always know that they’re working hard to foster a good environment for us to go fast. From the moment I joined the team and got in the car, I truly believed we could win. Rather than enduring anything, I see today as the result of everyone including us growing together. I’m really glad we were able to repay them with this result.

The fact that the team, ourselves too, finally won when we had never won before feels like the moment we went from zero to one. It’s shifted our mindset. Before this, the goal was jsut to score points. Now, scoring points is the norm and we’re aiming higher. Honestly, we’re not thinking about the championship yet. First of all, we want to develop the potential and mentality to consistently finish in the top ten or at least the top 15. When we get together at the next race, I hope that we can be at the front so we can do our best together with Fujiwara, the team, and Michelin.

Needless to say, the win proved popular among the Uma fandom. With the race happening hours after Nakayama Festa’s passing, some remarked the 2010 Takarazuka Kinen winner was riding with the #9 that day.

Ren Sato, winner in GT500 alongside Tomoki Nojiri for Team Mugen, tweeted he was “happy to witness this first victory as a personal sponsor.” Sato, who also competes in Super Formula, is a big fan of the franchise and an artist who likes drawing anime characters on his downtime in the paddock; for example, he drew Rice Shower ahead of the Super GT season opener in Okayama.

The Umamusume franchise, celebrating its 5.5th anniversary, tipped a cap on social media too: “Congratulations to the team, and to Tomibayashi and Fujiwara on their first Super GT victory!”

Unfortunately, to our knowledge, Fujiwara and Tomibayashi did not get on stage and perform “Instinctive Speed” afterward. (There aren’t any major horse tracks in Suzuka or Mie Prefecture. The closest is Chukyo Racecourse in the Aichi city of Toyoake; it hosts the Takamatsunomiya Kinen, so we picked its in-game winning live for this joke.)

Featured image credit: GTA