【SUPER FORMULA Round 5 / Motegi】

Super Formula sees season’s fifth winner.
Ryo Hirakawa claims his first win in the series.

SUPER FORMULA Round 5

Date	2019/08/17-18
Venue	Twinring Motegi
Weather	Fine
Surface	Dry
Race Lap	51Laps (1Lap = 4,801m)

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The fifth round of 2019 Super Formula series took place at Twin Ring Motegi. The race ended with Ryo Hirakawa’s win from the second grid. For Hirakawa, who had debuted in the Japanese domestic top formula in 2013 and drives for Itochu Enex Team Impul, this year, this was a long-awaited maiden victory in the category.

In the aftermath of a typhoon, the race weekend was unusually hot, with the highs reaching more than 35 degrees Celsius day after day. Even under such harsh conditions, Hirakawa was in good form from day one. He clocked the fastest time in the practice session on Friday, August 16th, 0.3 seconds ahead of Alex Palou in second.

Palou went off the track once in the session, but the second-fastest time meant the winner of Round 4 was also in good shape.

On Saturday, most of the drivers mainly worked on the set up with the soft tires, which they would use for the final battle for the pole position, during the practice session in the morning. Palou ended it as the fastest driver with 1’32″793, followed by Yuhi Sekiguchi (Itochu Enex Team Impul) and Nirei Fukuzumi (Docomo Team Dandelion Racing) in second and third respectively.

Hirakawa was lowly 14th in the session, but there was a good reason for that. In comparison to the conditions on Friday under an overcast sky, the track temperature on Saturday was much higher. So, he just focused on the set-up adjustment between what he had found on the day before and the Saturday’s track conditions. And this careful approach eventually led him to good results in the qualifying session and the race.

In the qualifying session, Hirakawa set the fastest time in Q1 when every driver used the medium tires. He was 0.3 seconds behind from the leader, however, because he “hit traffic on an attack lap,” and qualified in sixth in Q2, which meant he narrowly secured a place for Q3.

Learning a lesson from Q2, Hirakawa started his qualifying attempt as late as possible to avoid traffic, and this paid off. He bettered his own best time in Q2 by 0.6 seconds and secured the second grid with 1’31″641.

The pole position went to Palou. He was the only driver who broke the course record set by Hiroaki Ishiura last year, driving a JMS P.Mu/Cerumo Inging car as he does this year. Thus, the Spaniard became the new record holder and was starting the race from the top grid for two consecutive races, after doing so in the last Fuji round.

It was sweltering again on Sunday, August 18th, with the air/track temperatures at 37/49 degrees when the race was about to begin. Palou and Hirakawa on the front row, as well as Fukuzumi and Lucus Auer (B-Max Racing with Motopark) on the second, chose the soft tires for the start. Behind them, the drivers took different tire strategies, as Ishiura and Tomoki Nojiri (Team Mugen) on the third row picked the medium tires. Then Kamui Kobayashi (Carrozzeria Team KCMG) on the seventh grid chose the soft, while Naoki Yamamoto (Docomo Team Dandelion Racing) alongside him took the medium.

The race began badly for Yamamoto, as he stalled at the start of the formation lap and had to start from the pit lane. On top of this, the other two cars also stalled on the grids, after completing the formation lap. For this incident, the race start had to be delayed. The starting procedures were repeated from the formation lap, and the race distance reduced to 51 laps.

The top three drivers smoothly left their grids, while Kobayashi jumped up to fourth at the start. These four led the field for a while, keeping some gaps between them. Then Hirakawa started to get close to Palou, and on Lap 23 the Japanese made a successful move just before the final corner, thanks to Palou’s small mistake at 90-degree Corner.

Hirakawa immediately pulled away from Palou, and, after making the pit stop on Lap 36, resumed racing as the leader among the drivers who had already done their stops. On the other hand, Palou struggled to keep a good pace, probably due to an unsuitable car set up for the Sunday’s conditions. He went into the pit on Lap 37 and was still running in the interim second when he rejoined the race, but he had to settle for fourth at the end of the day.

On Lap 42, when all drivers had done their pit stops, Hirakawa was leading the race as a matter of course. With less than ten laps to go and a nine-second gap with Kobayashi who was the last to stop and running in second after that, Hirakawa kept a consistent pace with the medium tires until finish the race as the winner.

Hirakawa finished the last year’s Motegi round in second from the ninth grid by executing a two-stop strategy, but this time he won more straightforwardly.

Kobayashi earned second place. He seemed to have a hard time to capture Fukuzumi in the first half of the race, but he finally made it on Lap 33 at Turn 3. After closing the gap with Palou, the ex-Grand Prix racer became the interim leader when Hirakawa and Palou made their stops. And then he set excellent lap times with the soft tires which he had already used around 40 laps. This effort paid off and Kobayashi found himself running in second, after serving his mandatory pit stop on Lap 42. At the end of the race, the gap with Hirakawa was just 2.9 seconds.

Nick Cassidy (Vantelin Team Tom’s) was the surprising third-place finisher because he started the race from the 12th grid. As Yamamoto finished only in ninth, Cassidy now took over the championship leader.