【SUPER FORMULA Round 2 / Autopolis】

New course record set in Autopolis QF session.
Race cancelled due to bad weather.

SUPER FORMULA Round 2

Date	2018/05/11-13
Venue	Autopolis
Weather	Sunday : Rain Saturday : Fine
Surface	Sunday : Wet Saturday : Dry
Race Lap	54Laps (1Lap = 4,674m)

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• >>Result

Autopolis in Ohita prefecture hosted the second round of the 2018 Super Formula series. Unfortunately, the race had to be cancelled due to bad weather but the battles during the qualifying session were incredibly close, with a new course record being set. And it was significantly faster than the previous one.

This was the only second time for Yokohama Tire to supply their products for the Super Formula cars, as the event in 2016 had been cancelled in the aftermath of The Kumamoto Earthquake.

Since 2014, Autopolis round had always been put in the second half of season calendar but it was moved to the spring season for the first time in five years. This is the time of year when the temperatures are gradually rising toward the beginning of summer, so it was quite interesting to see how the improved soft tires for this year would perform under such conditions.

The series welcomed two new comers in this event. Tom Dillmann, who has a lot of experience in various international categories, joined Uomo Sunoco Team LeMans. Sena Sakaguchi driving for Team Mugen currently races in the Japanese F3 Championship series. So how these rookies would tame the Super Formula cars was another interesting aspect.

The weather was fine on Saturday, May 12th, the day for qualifying session. After having the free practice session in the morning, every driver went out to the track after lunch for Q1 qualifying attempt with the medium tires, as it was mandated by the rules. Two sets of fresh medium tires were allocated to each driver to allow them to make two attempts during the session.

Surprisingly, Sakaguchi was the interim pole sitter when all driver’s first time attack had been done. Many were stunned by his lap time, 1’27”727, as it was much faster than the last year’s fastest time in Q1. Then he even bettered his time to 1’27”677 in the second attempt, which was of course good enough to get through to Q2.

Q1 ended with Takuya Izawa of TCS Nakajima Racing at the top of time sheet. But B-Max Racing Team driver Katsumasa Chiyo, who was the 14th fastest in the session and the last one to make his way into Q2, was only about 0.5 seconds behind the fastest man.

Moreover, even Narain Karthikeyan was just around 0.6 seconds slower from his team m ate, Izawa, but failed to go on to Q2, being classified in 17th. The whole field might be one of the closest ever, as almost all drivers were within one second from the fastest one.

The fight in Q2 which everyone uses the soft tires was even hotter. While most drivers went for the qualifying lap immediately after their out lap, Kamui Kobayashi of Carrozzeria Team KCMG did it only after one more warmup lap.

This worked well and he set 1’25”799 which was 0.3 seconds faster than the previous course record. Kobayashi was the only driver who set the lap time less than 1’26” and got through to Q3 as the fastest man in Q2.

Kobayashi was followed by Nick Cassidy of Kondo Racing and Ryo Hirakawa of Itochu Enex Team Impul but only three thousandths of a second separated the latter two drivers, which was just to show how close the session was.

Even more amazingly, the drivers who were the eighth and ninth fastest, namely Tomoki Nojiri driving for Docomo Team Dandelion Racing and Hiroaki Ishiura of P.Mu Cerumo Inging, clocked the exactly same time, 1’26”426, when the eighth fastest would be allowed to go to Q3 and the ninth wouldn’t. In this case, Nojiri was classified in eighth because he had set the time a bit earlier than Ishiura had, much to the latter’s dismay.

In Q3 when the top eight drivers from Q2 fought for the pole position, Hirakawa opted for the same tactics as Kobayashi had done in Q2, doing one more lap before the attack, and managed to set the fastest time. “My target today was to score an extra point by securing the pole position,” Hirakawa said in the press conference. This was his first ever pole position in Super Formula but he was to be demoted to the fourth grid because he had been given a three grid penalty for the collision in the previous Suzuka round.

So the number one grid was handed to Nojiri, who said, “I was the last to get through to Q3 but I thought it just showed things were going well for me.” There was no doubt he was one of the luckiest man on that day.

Kobayashi somehow struggled in Q3 and ended the session in eighth and the last. But at least he became the course record holder by his fastest time in Q2.

Because of the rainfall from early morning on Sunday, the track was totally fogbound. As a thick fog restricted visibility, the free practice session in the morning was cancelled. Even worse, heavy rain started to fall when the drivers were about to go out for the warm up session just before the race and two drivers had accidents in the session due to the bad conditions.

Therefore, the race control stopped the session immediately and then had to decide to cancel the race itself, as the forecast said the weather wouldn’t improve for the whole day.