Akira Kurashita – The president, JAPAN RACE PROMOTION INC.

Koudai Tsukakoshi of Real Racing at Motegi in 2017 was so impressive for me. Driving a SF14 which is described as “a car that any driver can hardly make an overtake move with,” he made a lot of brilliant overtakings on that day. That was my personal highlight of the season.

And it was made possible by two different tire specifications provided for the race.

I have heard some negative opinions about the introduction of the soft compound tires until we saw that race at Motegi. And I knew some also said the track wouldn’t be the best one to use the two tire specifications. But the races at Motegi and Autopolis were completely out-of-the-box and really enjoyable. And to top it off, I believe the two tire specifications freed us from the stereotype view that “overtaking is almost impossible in SUPER FORMULA.”

I would pay my respects for people at Yokohama Tires for their bravery and efforts to provide the two tire specifications even in their first year in SUPER FORMULA.

Ichiro Akiyama – Head of MST Development department, The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd.

For 2017, the second year for Yokohama Tires to be the sole tire supplier of SUPER FORMULA, we changed the construction of the standard (medium compound) tires. The aim of the change was to pacify the peaked characteristics that had been pointed out in our first year and we believe we got more preferable characteristics in this area. Now teams and drivers know better in terms of how to use the ADVAN tires than they did last year, so I felt we had a lot of great racing on the tracks.

Regarding the soft tires, we re-examined the specifications, considering what we had learned at Motegi last year and had been developing the new one until just before Motegi race this year. As a result, the tires became more aggressive, which means it should be easy to set faster time in one lap attack. We provided this soft tires for the two races at Motegi and Autopolis.

Some teams took two stop strategies at Motegi. Some drivers did a long stint with the soft tires at Autopolis. It was amazing for us to know the strong will and ability of teams and drivers to understand the tires, probably better than we do, and make the most of the tire’s potential. It was also really delightful to see that our products were utilized very well. Thanks to such efforts by teams and drivers, those two races which two specifications were used were received so well, exceeding our expectations, to be honest.

SUPER FORMULA is a very attractive category, not only for Japanese top drivers but also for young foreign drivers who want to have an international opportunities. The promising talents, such as Stoffel Vandoorne, Pierre Gasly, or Felix Rosenqvist, had already competed in SUPER FORMULA and I am sure they are going to spread the word about this category. As a result, SUPER FORMULA will attract more attention globally and become more international in future.

The 2018 season will be the final year of SF14 chassis. We still have a plenty of room to improve in our tires but we know at the same time that yearly specification change should be avoided because we don’t want to confuse teams and drivers. The control tires should be stable and consistent. Therefore, the standard (medium compound) tires next year will be made with the same specifications with those in 2017.

On the other hand, we felt that the soft tires could have been a little more aggressive, considering the data from this year’s races, so we continue the development process of it. No decision has been made yet if we will introduce the latest soft tires at the moment but, to make races more interesting, we are on track for providing the tires that should have even higher grip level.