2023 SUPER FORMULA Round 7 Report

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The seventh round of the 2023 Super Formula series was held at Mobility Resort Motegi, formerly known as Twin Ring Motegi, in Tochigi Prefecture. Tomoki Nojiri (Team Mugen) scored his second victory of the season, and the championship leader, Ritomo Miyata (Vantelin Team Tom’s), added eight points to his tally by finishing in fourth. However, the point gap between them was reduced to ten points, as Noijri attained 23 points by making a pole-to-finish.

The Motegi round in August has always been the hottest race of every season. This year’s meeting was no exception, and the highs on the qualifying and race days were 34 and 35 degrees centigrade, respectively. The air/track temperatures were already 33/46 degrees when the qualifying session began on Saturday afternoon.

In Group A of Q1, Tadasuke Makino (Docomo Team Dandelion Racing) set the pace after going strong in the morning practice session. Yuhi Sekiguchi, who had been away from joining the fight in Q2 for a while, came in second with a time that was only 0.089 seconds shy of Makino’s. Following them, Liam Lawson (Team Mugen), Sena Sakaguchi (P.Mu/ Cerumo Inging), Naoki Yamamoto (TCS Nakajima Racing), and Kamui Kobayashi (Kids Com Team KCMG) made their way to Q2.

In Group B, Toshiki Oyu (TGM Grand Prix), who had to skip the previous round due to injury, was the fastest driver, beating Miyata by 0.2 seconds, a pretty big margin in the Super Formula’s standard. Nojiri got through to Q2 by setting the third fastest time, followed by Kakunoshin Ohta (Docomo Team Dandelion Racing), Ryo Hirakawa (Itochu Enex Team Impul) and Sho Tsuboi (P.Mu/ Cerumo Inging).

Nojiri dominated Q2 and took the pole position, as he was the only driver who set a time below 1’32” level, 1’31”955. It was the 16th pole position in his Super Formula career and the third of the 2023 season after the opening doubleheader weekend at Fuji. The second grid went to Ohta, which was his best qualifying result in the series. With Lawson coming in third and Oyu in fourth, Honda engine users filled the top four grids at the manufacturer’s home track.

The championship leader, Miyata, ended the session in eighth. But he was still positive as the position was pretty decent, considering Motegi has been his bogey circuit, where he had very much struggled to survive Q1 last year.

On the race day, the air temperature had already exceeded 30 degrees when the free practice in the morning hours took place. While the sky quickly became overcast just before the starting procedures began, cutting the strong sunshine, the air/track temperatures were still the highest of the weekend, 33/46 degrees, when the 37-lap race got underway.

Nojiri made a good start from the pole position and headed to the first corner. On the other hand, Ohta stalled his engine in the front row, which pushed him back to the bottom of the field. So, no one was between Nojiri and Lawson, and the Kiwi tried to come abreast to the teammate from the outside at Turn 1.

They entered Turn 2 side by side, but Lawson put his outside wheels off beyond the curb on the corner’s exit, spinning and going across the track from left to right. As this occurred at the top of the crowded field immediately after the start, it created havoc.

Particularly, Sekiguchi and Makino could do nothing to avoid Lawson’s car and crashed into it, becoming airborne. Nobuharu Matsushita (B-Max Racing Team) was also an innocent victim. He tried to steer himself away from the crashed cars and went off on the green, but his effort ended up hitting the guard rails there.

The race was instantly stopped by the red flag, and the surviving cars returned to the pit straight to line up there. Most importantly, those three drivers escaped uninjured. The race restarted behind the Safety Car after the track was cleared.

Lawson, who triggered the multi-car accident, also had heavy damage on his car’s rear wing. Instead of lining up on the straight, he headed to the pit lane after the red flag was shown and had his car repaired by the team. Thanks to their speedy job, he could rejoin the race from the pit lane but was later given a drive-through penalty for pitting in under the red flag.

The racing resumed from Lap 4 after two laps behind the Safety Car. Reflecting Motegi’s characteristics, overtaking was challenging, so there was no significant position change for the first few laps. But, when the tire change window opened at the end of Lap 10, Oyu, running in second, steered to the pit lane as the first one to do so. After the tire change, he rejoined in interim 11th and started to push to decrease the gap with Nojiri, who was leading the race.

Ren Sato (TCS Nakajima Racing) and Ohta also opted for an early stop and came into the pit on the same lap. However, outgoing Sato from his box collided with incoming Ohta as their boxes were placed beside each other. Consequently, one of Sato’s tires punctured because the tip of Ohta’s front wing end plate cut it, and Sato effectively fell out of the race. Ohta went back to the track after changing tires and the damaged front nose but returned to the box due to some unseen damage to the car. Ohta couldn’t continue, and Sato got a post-race time penalty for the team’s unsafe release.

The fight for the lead looked to be a duel between Oyu and Nojiri. The former had changed the tires at the earliest opportunity, and the latter seemingly chose the late-stop strategy. But Hirakawa behind them was also watching for a chance to join the battle, and many remembered his exciting catching-up in the closing stage of the previous Fuji round when he had fresher tires than others with lighter fuel load as a result of his very late pit stop.

Nojiri made the mandatory stop at the end of Lap 25. Hirakawa reacted to it and came into the pit on the next lap, but a small mistake during the tire change cost him some precious time. So he couldn’t overcut Nojiri and found himself in interim fourth, behind Oyu, when he rejoined.

And Hirakawa was now under threat from behind. On his out-lap, the tires weren’t warmed properly yet, and Yamamoto knew it and started pushing very hard to catch him. They came so close at 90 Degrees Corner, and Yamamoto dived into a space inside Hirakawa. However, there wasn’t enough room to get him through, and inevitably they hit each other.

The impact of the collision broke something on the left front corner of Yamamoto’s car. He went off at the first corner on the next lap because of the damage and retired on the spot. Hirakawa spun at the corner where they collided but could continue while Nojiri and Oyu were already far away from him. At least for the time being…

Miyata, the last one to change tires, visited his pit on Lap 28, and Nojiri moved up to the top of the board. Thanks to a big time gap he gained, Nojiri could control his pace for the remaining nine laps and scored his second victory of the season. Despite the incident at 90 Degrees Corner, Hirakawa caught up with Oyu and overtook him at S-Corners on Lap 32. So he finished the race in second after a three-race podium drought since the third round at Suzuka. Oyu came in third, beating Miyata, who had much fresher tires on the final laps, by just 0.4 seconds.

Miyata added eight points by finishing in fourth and stayed at the top of the point standings with 94. The gap with Lawson increased to eight points since the Kiwi ended the race out of points. On the other hand, Nojiri gained 23 points by making a pole to win and is heading to the final Suzuka rounds with 84 on his tally, just 10 points behind Miyata.