2020 SUPER FORMULA Round 4 Report

【SUPER FORMULA Round 4 / Autopolis】

Contrasting strategies create exciting race.
Tomoki Nojiri takes his season’s first win.

SUPER FORMULA Round 4

Date 2020/11/14-15
Venue Autopolis
Weather Fine
Surface Dry
Race Lap 41Laps
(1Lap = 4,674m)
2020 SUPER FORMULA Round 4

With a four-week interval after the battle in Sugo, the fourth round of the Super Formula series was held at Autopolis in Ohita Prefecture, far south from the previous event’s venue.

Located on the hillside of the Aso volcano’s somma, the race track is at high altitude, and the air temperature can drop to a single-digit degrees Celsius in mid-November. Usually, race cars run faster under colder conditions. So the point of focus was if the course record would be renewed in the qualifying session and how fast it would be, as the practice sessions on Saturday, November 14th, were run under a cloudless clear sky.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020 Super Formula calendar started later than in normal years. As a result, the later rounds need some special considerations to cope with the extremely low-temperature conditions, which the race cars usually wouldn’t face.

Therefore, to allow the drivers to warm up their tires properly, the Q2 and Q3 sessions were expanded from seven to ten minutes each. And there would be an additional formation lap in the race starting procedure. Also, the race distance, 41 laps, was significantly shorter than the last year’s event in May.

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The sky was clear on Sunday, November 15th, too. The fans were permitted to come in the circuit to watch the Super Formula cars possibly driving around the track at the fastest speed ever, although the spectating areas were limited.

The drivers were split up into two groups in Q1, but both groups saw the red flag during the session, which disrupted the drivers’ focus to a certain extent.

The fourteen drivers who survived the tough battle for Q2 included Nobuharu Matsushita (Buzz Racing with B-Max) and Ritomo Miyata (Vantelin Team Tom’s). The former stepped in for Sergio Sette Camara, getting the call asking him to drive only on Tuesday of the race week! The latter was the stand-in for Kazuki Nakajima, who was absent to participate in the WEC event, performing double duty with his Super Formula Lights races on the same weekend.

Even in Q1, many drivers already broke the existing course record, and all fourteen drivers set a faster time than the old record in Q2. The pole position was won by Tomoki Nojiri (Team Mugen), who set the stunning new record, 1’24″140 in Q3. This was his first pole position this season. Nirei Fukuzumi (Docomo Team Dandelion Racing) sat on the other side of the front row, with his veteran teammate, Naoki Yamamoto, taking the third grid.

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While there were the red flag interruptions in the qualifying, the race began on time, starting the formation laps at 2:40 pm. Nojiri led the field when they entered the first corner, and Fukuzumi followed. However, Yamamoto made a bad getaway, and he was passed by Sho Tsuboi (JMS P.Mu/Cerumo Inging) and Matsushita.

After several quiet laps, Sacha Fenestraz (Kondo Racing) suddenly slowed down on Lap 5, when he was running in tenth. He then lost his left rear wheel and had to abandon the car on the course side. The Super Formula rookie has attracted much attention for his speed, but this was the third consecutive retirement for him.

On Lap 7, the Safety Car was deployed to assist in the removal of Fenestraz’s halted car. The SC period lasted three laps, which meant the racing resumed on Lap 10 when the pit stop window stipulated by rule opened. The first one to do the mandatory tire change was Tadasuke Makino (TCS Nakajima Racing), who started the race from the 12th grid.

Tsuboi followed the Makino’s path on the next lap and rejoined the race ahead of the Nakajima Racing driver. But Tsuboi’s car behaved strangely because something was wrong with his left rear wheel, allowing Makino to close the gap with him in no time. Eventually, Tsuboi had to park his car at the first hairpin corner.

At almost the same time as Tsuboi stopped, the race leader Nojiri made the pit stop, as the team predicted that the SC would come out because of Tsuboi’s incident and called him in at the right time. Also helped by the team’s excellent job in changing tires, Nojiri found himself running ahead of Makino when he went out on the track.

Having his tires properly warmed up already, Makino could quickly close on Nojiri. However, when the gap between them came down to almost zero, and Makino looked ready to make a move on the leader, the race control sent out the Safety Car to clear out the Tsuboi’s car. So, Makino missed out on the best opportunity to overtake Nojiri to grab the position of race leader.

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As soon as the SC period was declared on Lap 13, many drivers headed to the pit lane, but Yamamoto, Nick Cassidy (Vantelin Team Tom’s), and Ukyo Sasahara (Team Mugen) opted for staying out. Therefore, when the race restarted three laps later, these three drivers were leading, followed by Nojiri, Makino, and Yuji Kunimoto (Carrozzeria Team KCMG), who gained a few positions during the pit stop.

It virtually became the fight between the three drivers who were yet to make the stop and Nojiri. Running in clean air, Yamamoto drove almost a second per lap faster than the Team Mugen driver did to build up enough time gap, which he needed to remain as the race leader even after the pit stop. A five-second margin he had at the restart grew to 10.4 seconds just in four laps, and then to about 20 seconds on Lap 29.

 

From this point onward, Nojiri started to pick up his pace, so the speed of the gap increase gradually slowed down. Yamamoto needed a 30-second margin until his pit stop, but now it looked challenging to achieve. On Lap 39, with only two laps to go, he visited the pit when he had a 25 second lead against Nojiri.

The team’s tire change was one of the fastest of the day, but it still fell short of sending out Yamamoto ahead of Nojiri on the track. To take a slim chance to win, the two-time Super Formula champion pushed very hard with a fresh set of tires. When the top two completed the penultimate lap, the gap between them was 3.7 seconds. Yamamoto then gained more than a second only in the second sector of the lap, and he was hot on the heels of Nojiri at the final corner of the last lap.

However, Nojiri narrowly held on to his lead and won the race. This was his career’s third Super Formula victory and the first of the season, which pushed him to the third in the championship. The runner-up, Yamamoto, became the fourth in the driver’s series. Makino finished in third and got on the SF podium the very first time. Thus, in this meeting, the Honda-powered cars swept the top three in the qualifying and the race.

DRIVER VOICE

Tomoki Nojiri [TEAM MUGEN]

—Result : Winner—
“I took the pole position for the first time since I came to Team Mugen, and, by keeping the momentum, I managed to win the race as well. I feel relieved now because I could get through this race meeting without any problem. In the qualifying session, it was a little difficult to keep my focus, as there were some unexpected incidents, but I wasn’t too nervous because my car ran brilliantly throughout the session. As I moved up to third in the championship, I will try even harder for the coming three races in the two rounds.”

ENGINEER VOICE

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

“Thanks to favorable weather conditions, the new course record was set in the qualifying session. We made a prediction of a potential new record, but Nojiri’s 1’24″1 was still surprising. Fukuzumi and Yamamoto, who followed him, also put together very good laps. While we expected the first timed lap would be the best time to set the fastest time, some teams actually took different qualifying approaches.

“We thought there would be a few unexpected incidents in the race as well, and the Safety Car came out twice in fact, but Nojiri took a well-deserved pole-to-win in the end. The general pace during the race was slightly slower than expected, as it was a warm day for this time of year. Still, the performance differences between worn tires and newer tires were apparent, which created an exciting battle in the final laps.

“There were some rule changes from this round. One of them was having two formation laps, instead of just one lap, before the start. In addition to this, the teams may use the tire warmer blankets from the next Suzuka round. These were introduced to improve the driver’s safety on the track. In fact, it looked very difficult to drive for them with cold tires, soon after the tire changing pit stop, due to the lower track temperature in this time of year. With these revised rules, the drivers’ difficulties in this aspect will be eased. We believe that these safety measures will make the coming races even more exciting.”