Dome Racing drivers Frédéric Makowiecki and Naoki Yamamoto were tied on 46 points for the championship lead with Impul's João Paulo de Oliveira and Tsugio Matsuda.
Following their win in at the 3 Hours of Fuji Team Mugen extended their championship lead in GT300 to 16 points over the Gainer Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 of Katsuyuki Hiranaka and Björn Wirdheim.
With Autopolis being the 2nd last round of the season, instead of having weight ballast equal to twice the number of points scored in the season, teams that competed in all previous 6 races had their weight ballast reduced to the number of points they scored.
The session was red flagged 13 minutes in after Naoki Yamamoto spun off-road and crashed.
The session resumed 9 minutes later but due to worsening conditions few teams completed laps on the circuit.