What Did Ayhancan Güven Do at Suzuka?

Ayhancan Güven made his first-ever Suzuka race appearance in the 2026 season's Suzuka 1000 km round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge, and while standing on the podium in third with the Absolute Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R, he also set the fastest lap of the race at 1:59.966. For a driver racing at a circuit for the first time to both reach the podium and break the lap record in the same weekend is not something commonly seen in this category.

What Did Ayhancan Güven Achieve at Suzuka?

Let us answer the question clearly: Güven finished the Suzuka 1000 km, run on September 13, 2026, in third place, and with his 1:59.966 lap he set both the fastest lap of the race and the track record in the GT3 category. The official result classification confirms that this lap was completed at an average speed of 174.25 km/h. Producing these figures in his first race at a 5,200-meter circuit that demands courage rather than technique is not something that can be attributed to chance.

Let us also note this from the start: Suzuka was not familiar territory for Güven. He experienced the perfect S curves of the second sector, 130R, and its notoriously frustratingDegner corner in real life for the first time. Doing this in a series like the Intercontinental GT Challenge, at one of the most demanding circuits in the world, on a weekend where factory-level teams are competing, is a heavy task. The Turkish driver came through it standing tall.

How the Weekend Went: From Third Place to the Podium

Güven shared the No. 7 Absolute Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R with Dorian Boccolacci and Alessandro Ghiretti. The trio started the race from third on the grid; in other words, they were competitive and entered the weekend not with a weak package but by doing the job properly.

The race itself, however, was not smooth. The gap opened to the leader due to problems in the pit lane was the kind that would normally crush a team's morale. But this crew did not give up the fight and claimed third place at the finish. It is reported that Güven reclaimed third position in the final part of the race, carrying his team onto the podium. The podium result despite the problems is no exaggeration here; in endurance racing, recovering a weekend that went wrong in the pits means winning back what was lost during the race, and that is the job of drivers with the right timing.

A total of 128 laps were completed during the race. For three drivers to sustain this pace alternately over a 1,000-kilometer distance shows that the car and the team did their job correctly as well.

1:59.966: Not an Ordinary Fast Lap

Lapping Suzuka in under 2 minutes is not an easy feat for GT3 cars. This circuit is long, undulating and unforgiving; after the karting-like figure-eight (Siro), you follow the giant black swan, and a single mistake in a racing line burns the next two sectors as well. Güven's 1:59.966 lap went beyond being the fastest lap of the race, going into the record books as the GT3 class lap record at the circuit.

These two concepts need to be distinguished: "fastest lap of the race" means the best time of that weekend; "lap record" means the best lap the category has ever set at that circuit in its history. Capturing both at the same time rarely happens while all your rivals are racing with fast cars in competitive conditions. As someone who has followed this business for many years, let me say: lap records are usually broken in pole position sessions, not at the end of a tired race that has run 128 laps.

Why Is Suzuka a Different Experience?

The 5.807-kilometre Suzuka is one of the few true legendary circuits of motorsport. This place, where the figure-eight design meets Japanese engineering tradition, grinds drivers down over the years; some never find speed here. Few are the circuits where world champions lose their racing edge, and Suzuka is one of them.

For Güven to return from his first race at this circuit with a podium and a record is a notable page for Turkish motorsport as well. The Anadolu Agency's news drew attention on a scale that carried the result to the national agenda. In the past, Turkish drivers even making international podiums was news; now what is being discussed is no longer just the podium, but the quality of the podium and the field in which it came. At its core, this is a good sign.

Two Weekends in a Row, Two Podiums

Even if Suzuka alone is a success story, the real context of the matter does not end there. Within the same season, on the weekend just before it, Güven took the first podium of his WEC career by finishing second with Manthey DK Engineering at Lone Star Le Mans, the 6-hour race of the World Endurance Championship in Austin. The team kept up the podium battle despite the 5-second penalty given during the race and got the job done.

So what we are talking about is not just an isolated brilliant weekend: two weekends in a row, two different series, two different team structures, two podiums. It had been officially announced at the start of the season that he would run 2026 in the LMGT3 class in WEC with Manthey; this programme also includes special assignments such as the IGTC round at Suzuka. A factory driver's calendar fills up like this, and being able to deliver like this every single weekend cannot be explained by chance.

Career Table: Where These Podiums Came From

Güven's rise on the international stage did not begin yesterday. To read this result correctly, you need to look at the curve in the background:

The DTM title deserves a sentence of its own: Güven won the final race of the season to become champion and went down in history as the first Turkish champion in DTM history. This spectrum, ranging from touring cars to GT3, from simulation to real-track endurance, also shows that today's factory drivers are no longer locked into a single discipline.

Who Is With Which Team: Porsche, Manthey and Absolute Racing

One of the questions readers ask most frequently is this: Which team does Güven race for? The answer is layered. Since 2024, he has been part of Porsche's factory structure, racing within Manthey Racing and counting among Red Bull's athletes. The DTM program was also run under this umbrella. At the Suzuka 1000 km, however, the team was different: the No. 7 car took to the track on behalf of Absolute Racing, because in the IGTC's endurance format, teams can operate with different setups per race.

This is not a contradiction; it is how GT racing works today. A factory driver is assigned to the different teams the brand is represented by. The fact that Güven carries the same brand's colors both in the WEC and in the IGTC with the Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) EVO should be read as an indicator of his reliability on the Porsche side.

The Nürburgring Connection

Güven will also be on the starting grid at the Nürburgring 24 Hours in May 2026, and over the last two years he made headlines in this classic race through his battle with Max Verstappen's team. The miles spent on the Green Hell were like secret training for the Suzuka performance: both circuits are among the world's most selective racing venues, and surviving on both requires something beyond being fast.

Rize Native or Istanbulite? A Small Note

In news texts, Güven's origins are sometimes conveyed in two different ways: encyclopedic records show he was born on January 2, 1998 in Istanbul, while some news reports use the expression "motorsport athlete from Rize." Both are probably true; it is quite a common occurrence in this country for a driver with family roots in Rize to be born in Istanbul. What matters is that his work on the track is not overshadowed by this detail, and both cities have earned the right to claim this driver.

What Comes After the Podium?

Suzuka was the 4th round of the 2026 IGTC calendar; the rest of the season will show whether Güven can keep up this momentum. On the WEC side, the LMGT3 program running with Manthey continues to build on the momentum captured at COTA. Although momentum may seem like an abstract concept in endurance racing, it has concrete consequences in terms of the pit crew's confidence and the driver's standing in the team hierarchy: a driver who takes the first podium takes the second much more easily.

As someone who has been watching this scene for over thirty years, I recognize the turning points in the journey of Turkish drivers on the international stage. Some of them fade away. But when a driver breaks a lap record and makes the podium on a track they are racing for the first time, then climbs onto the WEC podium on another continent a week later, and does so carrying a DTM championship behind them, that is no longer a fleeting sparkle but a lasting level. Güven's 1:59.966 at Suzuka stands like a threshold we will look back on in the years to come.

Sources

• Ayhancan Takes a Podium at Suzuka - TOSFED
• 2026 Suzuka 1000km Race Result (Final) - Intercontinental GT Challenge official results report
• Ayhancan Güven finished 3rd in the Intercontinental GT Challenge's Suzuka 1000 round - Anadolu Agency
• Ayhancan Güven Claims First WEC Career Podium at COTA - Red Bull Türkiye
• Official: Ayhancan Güven to Race with Manthey in WEC in 2026 - Motorsport.com.tr
• Who Is Ayhancan Güven and What Are His Achievements? - Red Bull Türkiye
• Historic Championship from Our National Pride Ayhancan Güven - TOSFED
• Ayhancan Güven - Wikipedia (tr)
• Ayhancan Güven finished third in the Suzuka 1000 race - Mutajans
• 2025 IGTC Suzuka 1000KM Classification (track length)