【SUPER FORMULA Round 5 / Twinring MOTEGI】

Nojiri Renews Motegi Track Record And Dominate Race.
Third Victory Raises His Championship Chance.

SUPER FORMULA Round 5

Date	2021/08/28-29
Venue	Twinring MOTEGI
Weather	Cloudy
Surface	Dry
Race Lap	35Laps (1Lap = 4,801m)

• >>Report
• >>Result

After a two-month absence since the Sugo round, the 2021 Super Formula series got into its second half of the season. When the competitors headed to Motegi, Tomoki Nojiri (Team Mugen) led the championship, and Toshiki Oyu (TCS Nakajima Racing) was in second being17 points behind him. So Nojiri started the latter part of the season with a healthy lead, although only the best five results of a driver out of seven races affective are counted for the championship by the rules.

The Team Mugen driver won the season’s first two races but had somewhat disappointing results in the following two rounds. Moreover, with two rounds at Motegi in this year’s calendar, his career’s best result at this track was the sixth in 2015. Therefore, while he was still leading the championship, the situation could be overturned quickly, especially if one of his rivals would get successive wins in this second half. So, one of the talking points before this round was if Nojiri would perform like those first two races again at Motegi.

On Saturday, August 28th, the air temperature already surpassed 30 degrees centigrade in the morning hours, which was typical for this time of the year at Motegi. However, thanks to some thick clouds, the track surface temperature was slightly lower than expected when the qualifying session got underway. As was the case in the previous Sugo round, the drivers were divided into Group A and B for Q1 and Q2.

In Group A, Oyu set 1’32″342 in Q1 to beat everyone in the group and advanced to Q2. But, surprisingly, Nojiri in another group bettered Oyu’s time by more than a second by clocking 1’31″336. This was almost a second faster than Nobuharu Matsushita, who came in second in the group. This big time gap in the qualifying has been rarely seen in Super Formula in these years.

Nojiri further improved his time in Q2 by setting 1’31”100. It was very close to the existing track record which was just renewed last year, and he eventually broke it. Going out on the track as the first driver to make an attempt in Q3, he set the new record, 1’31”070, and won the pole position.

Since the other drivers also improved their times from Q1 to Q3, the gap between Nojiri and others was significantly reduced. Still, he was 0.245 seconds faster than Yuhi Sekiguchi (Carenex Team Impul), who secured the second grid. Matsushita came in third, and Ritomo Miyata (Kuo Vantelin Team Tom’s) followed in fourth, but he got a ten-grid penalty because of changing his engine. As a result, Oyu took over the fourth gird.

The sky was overcast on Sunday, but everyone’s concern over rain proved to be unnecessary, so the 35-lap race was run on the dry surfaces throughout. Nojiri got a smooth getaway and went through the first corner as the race leader. Behind him, Ryo Hirakawa (Carnex Team Impul) rocketed from the fifth grid and passed Oyu as soon as the red lights blacked out. He even tried to get ahead of Matsushita as well, and they went into Turn 1 side-by-side. But Matsushita fended it off and kept the third place, closely followed by Hirakawa.

As is well known, overtaking isn’t an easy thing to do at Motegi. So the drivers fought each other furiously for positions, using OverTake System, during the opening lap before the field became elongated. In this situation, Kenta Yamashita (Kondo Racing), starting from the eighth grid, slightly hit Nirei Fukuzumi (Docomo Team Dandelion Racing) from behind Fukuzumi went sideways at the V corner.

As the pack was still crowded, Fukuzumi’s action to catch his car caused a big mess. Some drivers had to use the run-off area to avoid hitting him, but, unfortunately, Kodai Tsukagoshi (ThreeBond Drago Corse) had nowhere to go and ended up with hitting Fukuzumi’s car and almost running over it.

Both cars were severely damaged in this incident. In addition, Kazuya Oshima (NTT Communications Rookie) was also involved in another collision in the aftermath of the incident and had to retire the car. Thus, these three drivers dropped out even before completing the first lap, and the Safety Car was deployed.

The racing resumed on Lap 5. The race leader, Nojiri, started to pull away from Sekiguchi, setting the new fastest lap one after another. On the other hand, Sekiguchi tried to undercut Nojiri and made the pit stop to change tires on Lap 10 as the first driver to do so. Reacting to this, Nojiri came into the pit on the next lap, and, thanks to the crew’s perfect job at the box, he denied Sekiguchi’s attempt to undercut him. So Nojiri remained in the effective lead when he rejoined the race.

“In the last few races, we seemed to get screwed up when we opted for a longer first stint. So we had decided before the race how we would react to the main rival’s choice about the pit stop,” Nojiri said in the press conference after the race.

As the other drivers headed to the pit lane one after another, Nojiri gradually emerged to the front and, when Hirakawa came in as the last driver to make the stop on Lap 26, he was leading the field again.

With three laps to go, Sekiguchi was 3.4 seconds behind the leader. He used OTS for the whole lap to catch up rapidly on the final lap, but Nojiri received the checkered flag first just a second ahead of him. This was Nojiri’s third victory of the season.

Sekiguchi finished in second, and Matsushita endured Hirakawa’s heavy pressure in the closing stage to come in third. On the penultimate lap, Hirakawa dived to the inside of Matsushita at the S corner, using OTS. Still, it was a bit too optimistic, and he ended up going sideways. Matsushita calmly stayed away from it and got on the podium for the first time this season.