【SUPER FORMULA Round 3 / Sugo】

Debutant Sergio Sette Camara snatches pole position.
Nick Cassidy claims his first win in 2020.

SUPER FORMULA Round 3

Date	2020/10/17-18
Venue	Sportsland SUGO
Weather	Fine
Surface	Dry
Race Lap	53Laps (1Lap = 3,586m)

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The 2020 Super Formula series visited Sport Land Sugo for its third round. The length of a lap of the track in Miyagi Prefecture is about 3.6 kilometers, which is shorter than other race tracks used by the series, and the new course record set in the previous year’s race meeting was 1’03”953.

For the last two years, the Sugo rounds were held in May and June, but the event moved to late October this year. This date change meant the temperatures would be lower, so the existing course record could well be broken this year again if the weather conditions had been favorable.

However, each round of the series has been run as “a one-day event” this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As the qualifying session was scheduled on Sunday morning after two practice sessions on Saturday, two hours in total, it was crucial to find a good car set-up during the practice sessions.

Unfortunately, the track was wet on Saturday morning. Although it was gradually drying in the afternoon, such track conditions didn’t help the teams’ car set-up work at all. Plus, the later part of the afternoon session, when every driver wanted to do some qualifying simulations, was cut short by the red flag. As a result, they weren’t well prepared for the qualifying session and race on the following day.

The track activities on Sunday began under the clear autumn sky. The morning’s low air temperature meant the desirable conditions for setting a new course record, but no one could make it, probably for the lack of fine-tuning in the car set-up.

Q1 of the qualifying session was held in two groups, as traffic might be a problem for everyone on this particular track. In Group B, Toshiki Oyu (TCS Nakajima Racing) crashed, so his qualifying time, which was good enough to go to Q2, was deleted because he stopped the session by causing the red flag. And this promoted Sergio Sette Camara (Buzz Racing with B-Max) to seventh and the last of the group’s qualifier to Q2.

Sette Camara was supposed to drive in Super Formula for the full season this year, but he had to delay his debut in the series to this third round due to the Covid-19 related restriction on entry to Japan. Therefore, he drove around Sugo for the first time on Saturday, so no one could imagine that the Super Formula rookie would snatch the pole position on Sunday at the time!

The course record holder, Naoki Yamamoto (Docomo Team Dandelion Racing), missed out to go on to Q3. Ryo Hirakawa (Itochu Enex Team Impul), the pole sitter of the first two rounds, survived to Q3, and he was likely to secure the third consecutive pole position, as he was the fastest when everyone completed the third lap in the session. However, Sette Camara surprisingly improved his time to 1’4″235 on his fourth and final lap. It was the Brazilian’s shocking Super Formula debut at the track where he had never driven before.

Two-and-a-half-hours after the end of the qualifying session, the 53-lap race got underway. Sette Camara’s start wasn’t perfect, and Hirakawa overtook him down to the first corner. Nick Cassidy (Vantelin Team Tom’s) and Yamamoto followed them, as Sacha Fenestraz (Kondo Racing) didn’t make an ideal getaway from the third grid, and he was passed by those two.

Fenestraz’s bad luck didn’t end there. He was hit from behind by Kazuki Nakajima (Vantelin Team Tom’s), who locked up under braking for Turn 1. The Frenchman managed to bring the car back to the pit, but he couldn’t rejoin the race. The expectations were always high for this Super Formula rookie, as he certainly has a formidable speed, but he didn’t see the checkered flag for two races running.

Hirakawa led the field in the early stage. On Lap 4, Yamamoto overtook Cassidy to form the top three with Hirakawa and Sette Camara. Then, after a period of calm for a while, Yamamoto came close to the Brazilian at Final Corner on Lap 18 and moved up to second by overtaking him from the outside at Turn 1, using the OverTake System. Soon after that, Cassidy also passed Sette Camara at the Uma-no-se corner, which means “horse’s back,” and Tomoki Nojiri (Team Mugen) closed on him from behind, too.

Being desperate to avoid losing more positions, Sette Camara chose to make a pit stop to get a fresh set of tires. However, with the tires being not adequately warmed up yet, he locked up under the braking for Turn 4 on his out lap and crashed straight into the tire barriers. Thus, the star of the qualifying day ended the race prematurely.

His crash caused the Safety Car to come out, and the leading drivers took this opportunity to do their pit stop on the same lap. Consequently, the top six order didn’t change, so Hirakawa was still leading, followed by Yamamoto, Cassidy, Nojiri, Yuji Kunimoto (Carrozzeria Team KCMG), and Kenta Yamashita (Kondo Racing).

On Lap 28, the racing resumed, and Cassidy started to increase his pace significantly. When he crossed the control line after the restart, the gap between Yamamoto in second and Cassidy was only 0.2 seconds. Yamamoto tried everything he could to defend his position, but the Kiwi managed to pass him on the pit straight by using OTS at the exit of Final Corner.

Now running in second, Cassidy was unstoppable. He rapidly closed in upon Hirakawa, repeating what he had done on Yamamoto to reduce the gap with the leader. On the lap he finally passed Hirakawa, Cassidy set the fastest lap of the race at the same time.

Then Cassidy continued at an unbeatable pace, renewing his own fastest lap time for three consecutive laps. When he received the checkered flag first, for the first time this season, he had almost four seconds cushion against Hirakawa. While Cassidy started the season with a poor result for him, finishing in sixth, he made a podium finish in the second round. And he added many points by claiming a victory at Sugo, which pushed him up to the second in the championship.

Hirakawa finished the race in second and remained the championship leader by earning 17 points, including those for the qualifying results. Coming in third and getting his first podium finish this year, Yamamoto brought back 11 points and moved up to sixth in the championship.