2018 SUPER FORMULA Round 3 Report

【SUPER FORMULA Round 3 / Sugo】

Safety Car decides Sugo round winner.
Yamamoto gets second win and leads championship.

SUPER FORMULA Round 3

Date 2018/05/25-27
Venue Sportsland Sugo
Weather Fine
Surface Dry
Race Lap 68Laps
(1Lap = 3,704m)
2018 SUPER FORMULA Round 3

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The third round of the 2018 Super Formula series was held at Sportsland Sugo. On this relatively short but exciting race track, the Safety Car period became one of the deciding factors of the race, which saw Naoki Yamamoto’s second victory of the season, following his win at the season opener at Suzuka.

Friday, May 25th, was really hot and the air temperature rose above 30 degrees Celsius, with the track temperature around 50 degrees. Under such conditions, no one could set remarkable lap time during the practice session on this day.

The fastest driver on Friday was the reigning champion Hiroaki Ishiura. While the team to which he belongs, Jms P.Mu Cerumo Inging, has been the championship winner for last three years, their records at Sugo hasn’t been very good for some reason. But, this year, he looked so strong from the day one of the race weekend.

Together with his teammate Yuji Kunimoto, Ishiura got through to Q3 in the qualifying session on Saturday but he spun off on his qualifying attempt in Q3 before setting a proper lap time and ended the session in eighth.

The star of the day was Tomoki Nojiri of Docomo Team Dandelion Racing. Although he lagged behind his team mate Nobuharu Matsushita in Q2, Nojiri was the only driver who bettered his Q2 time in Q3 – by 0.2 seconds – and secured the pole position with the new course record.

The weather was fine on Sunday, May 27th. But there was a certain amount of clouds in the sky and it became lightly cloudy when the race was about to start. Because of this, the conditions were somewhat milder than they were on Friday, with the air / track temperatures around 24/41 degrees.

The top four qualifiers, Nojiri at the pole position, Kamui Kobayashi of Carrozzeria Team KCMG, Ryo Hirakawa of Itochu Enex Team Impul, and Kunimoto, all chose the soft tires and, thanks to the better grip of those tires at the start, they completed the opening lap without any position change.

Behind them, however, Yamamoto moved up to fifth, as Matsushita didn’t made a good start, and the Team Mugen driver was followed by his team mate Daniel Ticktum who jumped up from the ninth grid. The Briton replaced Nirei Fukuzumi for this event and will do the same in the next Fuji round.

Utilizing the soft tires, the top four in a single pack pulled away from Yamamoto and others. But Kobayashi looked to have a slightly better pace than others and, on Lap 14, he actually made a bold move on Nojiri from the outside of Turn 1. The move was successful and Kobayashi, at that point leading the race, built a more than one second gap with other three just on the next lap.

Many expected Kobayashi would leave the rest far behind if he would continue like that. On Lap 16, however, Katsumasa Chiyo driving for B-Max Racing Team and James Rossiter of Vantelin Team Tom’s crashed at Uma-no-se – means ‘horse’s back’ in Japanese – Corner, after some close fighting.

This caused the Safety Car to come out on the next lap. And Yamamoto, Kodai Tsukagoshi of Real Racing who started the race from the 12th grid with the soft tires, and Kazuki Nakajima, the teammate of Rossiter, were the first to make their pit stops on this opportunity when they were running in fifth, sixth, and seventh respectively. Each of these three driver’s rejoined the field at the back end after having a trouble free pit stop.

Then Nojiri and Hirakawa followed their path on the next lap and of course their track positions were behind the above mentioned three drivers. At this moment, the top six drivers were yet to make their mandatory pit stops and Yamamoto led the group of drivers who already had made their stops, followed by Nick Cassidy of Kondo Racing who had done his stop as early as Lap 5, Tsukagoshi, and Nakajima.

The racing resumed on Lap 24. Kobayashi was still leading the race but yet to make a pit stop for tire change which the rules required. Therefore, he needed a more than 30 second gap with Yamamoto to keep the position even after the stop, which was quite a tall order.

The ex-Grand Prix driver pushed as hard as possible with his worn out soft tires and came into the pit on Lap 44. But, alas, the pit stop was less than perfect, which eliminated his slim hope to win the race. When Kobayashi rejoined the race, he found himself running in seventh…

Then Kunimoto become another interim leader but he was out of the race soon after that due to a mechanical glitch. When all drivers had done their stops, on Lap 62, Yamamoto was leading the race and he kept the position until the checkered flag fell. This was his second win of the season but the first victory at Sugo ever.

Completing a very long stint – more than 60 laps – with the soft tires after an early pit stop, Cassidy finished in second and got on the podium for the first time this season. Nakajima filled the last corner of the podium by finishing in third.

DRIVER VOICE

Naoki Yamamoto [TEAM MUGEN]

—Result : Winner–
“There’s no doubt the strategy decided my race today. The team called me in at the perfect timing. Last year, I had a tough and frustrating season because the things kept going wrong, despite our having made every effort we could. But today I found the things could go so well and It made me feel ‘the depth of motor racing’ again. It’s true that I had only won at Suzuka and it had put me certain pressure to date. Even though the strategy and a few other things helped me today, I feel relieved by the fact I won it here when the situation allowed.”

ENGINEER VOICE

Noritaka Koguchi [THE YOKOHAMA RUBBER CO., LTD.]

“As the track temperature was high on Friday, I thought it would be quite difficult to set a new course record. But in fact the temperatures were going down on the next two days, so I hoped someone would break the old record in the qualifying session. And we saw the pole position time in Q3 was 0.2 seconds faster than the existing course record.

“It has been said that, ‘The cars are generally faster in Q2 than in Q3,’ this year but Nojiri set the overall fastest time in Q3 this time. Another thing we have to look at is that the drivers took different ways for preparation before their qualifying attempts. I mean the number of warm up lap or laps varied and some of them went really slow to warm up the tires, choosing a different sequence from the other drivers.

“Basically, rubber isn’t easily warmed up and just as not easily cooled down. But the characteristics vary depending on the amount of rubber used. And, because of this, the soft tires are easily warmed up but just as easily cooled down, if you compare them with the medium tires. In other words, the current soft tires tend to get colder even under the conditions which normally the tires should keep a good working temperature. That’s why the drivers are still trying quite a few things to find out the best way to make the soft tires work. But we, as the tire supplier, think this must be improved to help the drivers warm up the tires easier in future.”