【SUPER FORMULA Round 6 / Okayama】

Spectacular fights in heavy rain.
Sekiguchi wins breathtaking battle to end season’s victory drought.

SUPER FORMULA Round 6

Date	2018/09/07-09
Venue	Okayama International Circuit
Weather	Rain
Surface	Wet
Race Lap	34Laps (1Lap = 3,703m)

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As a result of a standing autumnal rain front, the western part of mainland Japan, which includes Okayama International Circuit, had a long spell of heavy rain over the second weekend of September. During the unofficial practice sessions held on Friday, September 7th, the track remained dry but then a heavy rain started to fall on that night.

The qualifying session on Saturday got underway in rain and on the totally wet track. However, the amount of rain and thus water on the track decreased over time during the session, which saw the lap times getting better by seconds from Q1 to Q2 and Q3.

The pole sitter was Yuhi Sekiguchi. He was the lowly 12th in Q1 but was fifth in Q2 by improving his time about two seconds. Then he made a well thought out qualifying attempt in Q3, based on what he learned in Q2 – “I felt the tires slightly lost grip at the end of the lap,” he said – and the fact that there was a bit less water on the track in Q3. This led to the fastest time in the session, 1’24”446, and his first pole position of the season.

The heavy rain continued as forecasted on Sunday, September 9th. Keeping such bad weather conditions in mind, the race control decided to shorten the race distance. But as the time to start the race approached, the rain suddenly became even heavier, so they had to delay the start for one hour. Thus, the race began at 14:55, using the Safety Car start procedures.

But the drivers struggled just to stay on the track because it was raining so hard and the amount of water on the track surface was too much. After seven laps that were led by the Safety Car, the race control stopped the race by the red flag.

The race was resumed, after a wait of one more hour for better weather conditions, led by the Safety Car again. And, at the end of Lap 13, the Safety Car headed to the pit lane and proper racing on the track finally began.

Trailing a thick water spray, Kamui Kobayashi running in second quickly closed the gap with Sekiguchi as soon as they started racing. Kobayashi used the overtaking button to come abreast of the race leader at the back straight end but Sekiguchi managed to fend it off.

Despite the bad conditions, they continued an incredible close fight for almost a lap, sometimes becoming side-by-side. But Kobayashi finally made a successful move at Mack Knight Corner, making a slight contact with Sekiguchi, which left a certain amount of damage on the nose cone of Kobayashi’s car.

The ex-Grand Prix driver immediately began to pull away. However, on Lap 23, the Safety Car came out because the race controller thought the conditions had become worse and dangerous. As a result, the large gap between Kobayashi and Sekiguchi shrunk to virtually zero. So all attention was focused on what would happen on the restart.

When the Safety Car period ended on Lap 27, Sekiguchi started to put heavy pressure on the leader. Kobayashi resisted it as much as he could but went wide at Double Hairpin Corner, which allowed Sekiguchi to regain the lead. With Kobayashi closing the gap again, it looked that the battle between them would began for the third time soon, until the Safety Car came out again on Lap 31.

During this Safety Car period, the elapsed time from the start reached to 70 minutes and, as it had been announced beforehand that the race would end when the maximum race time had passed, the checkered flag was shown before the leader completed the prescribed race distance.

This gave Sekiguchi the first win of the season. Kobayashi lost out for that costly mistake, but the second place finish was his best result in this season so far. With Sekiguchi’s teammate Ryo Hirakawa finishing in third, Itochu Enex Team Impul had their two drivers on the podium at the end of the day.