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Very sad to see another team leaving specially such a friendly and likeble one.
Still, this was sort of inevitable to me. It even surprised me how Sumitomo have kept it for so long.
Michelin and Bridgestone are way ahead of any other tire manufacturer and spends +€650m, annually, on R&D. GoodYear, which is the 3rd, spends only €350m, 4th Continental => €220m, Pirelli=>€200m, Sumitomo=>€175m, Hankook=>€150m, Yokohama=>€105m
On Super GT, Yokohama and Dunlop(brand owned by Sumitomo in Japan, and GoodYear elsewhere) needs to pay for the few teams to run on their slower tires. The thing is that GTLM is different than SGT where WH applies to individual cars instead of brands(and latter in the seasons, the Bridgestone and Michelin cars are so weight handicaped that the others can get good results out of it).
Falken should have done what Dunlop(and others) have done before and gone with a unique car. That way, the BoP would compensante for any tire deficit and they would get good results much more often. I guess they just couldn't partner with an exclusive manufacturer and had to stick with the Porsche.
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