2022 SUPER FORMULA Round 7 Report

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With four races in two meetings remaining, the 2022 Super Formula championship came to Motegi for the season’s second “doubleheader” event. And after a one-month break since the Fuji round in mid-July, Naoki Yamamoto (TCS Nakajima Racing) won the seventh round, the first race of the weekend, from the pole position, putting an end to his nearly two-year victory drought since the 2020 season’s fifth round at Suzuka.

As it was held in mid-August, the summer holiday season in Japan, many family spectators with children visited Motegi. The race track and its surrounding amusement facilities were renamed Mobility Resort Motegi last March, and this was the first major car race event since then. When it opened as Twin Ring Motegi 25 years ago, the Formula Nippon Championship, the predecessor of the Super Formula series, also marked the opening of the newly built race track.

The doubleheader weekend started with the free practice on Friday. Toshiki Oyu (TCS Nakajima Racing) performed extremely well in the session, and his best lap time was 0.2 seconds faster than Sho Tsuboi (P.Mu/Cerumo Inging), who ended the practice in second. Oyu seemed to keep the momentum for the qualifying, but the fastest driver in the session on Saturday morning was his teammate, Yamamoto, probably because the air/track temperatures dropped steeply and the conditions were very different from those on the day before.

Yamamoto narrowly survived the battle for Q2, as he ended Q1 in only sixth in Group B. In Q2, most of his rivals waited for the latest possible timing to make their qualifying attempts. But Yamamoto opted for doing it a bit earlier after carefully warming his tires on his preparation lap with less traffic. His tactics paid off, and he set 1’30″423 to beat the second fastest driver, Sacha Fenestraz (Kondo Racing), by 0.3 seconds. The fact that others inevitably hit traffic more or less on their attack laps also helped Yamamoto.

Fenestraz took the second grid with the new chassis since his previous car was written off because of the heavy crash in the last Fuji round. Oyu settled for the third grid after a promising start on Friday.

The 37-lap race got underway at half-past two p.m. Soon after the end of the qualifying, the clouds got thicker and thicker, and the rain finally started to fall during the race starting procedures. Therefore, the race control declared “Wet Track” 15 minutes before the start of the formation lap, which meant the teams had to change to the wet tires on the grids. As the rain became heavier, it was decided that the race would start behind the Safety Car.

The Safety Car came in after three laps; the proper racing commenced from Lap 4. Yamamoto had a clear advantage because, at the head of the field, he was the only driver who didn’t have any water spray screen in front of him. So he could build a 1.6-second gap with Fenestraz during the effective opening lap and extended it to 5.5 seconds at the end of Lap 10, driving at a consistent pace.

On Lap 11, Fenestraz ran wide at V Corner, increasing the gap with Yamamoto even further, but drove steadily after that to keep in second place. Behind him, Oyu couldn’t keep up with the top two’s pace and started to feel heavy pressure from Tomoki Nojiri (Team Mugen). Moreover, the Nakajima Racing driver suddenly lost his speed at Hair Pin Corner on Lap 13 due to his car’s gear shifter malfunctioning. Nojiri, of course, seized the opportunity to move up to third.

Oyu’s problem seemed to be only sporadic, and he could continue at racing speed for a while, but the same thing happened on Lap 20. So he had no choice but to visit his pit. While the Nakajima Racing driver could rejoin the race after repair work on the car’s electric system, he was already several laps down from the leader at the time.

Nojiri then began to reduce the margin with Fenestraz quickly and, with the help of OverTake System, caught up with the Frenchman at Hair Pin Corner on Lap 19. Fenestraz fended it off and did the same again at 90 Degree Corner by taking a block line. It was a heated and entertaining battle in the water screen!

The rain became lighter around that time, and the track conditions were improving. And it helped Fenestraz to pick up his pace, so he could start to cut down the gap with Yamamoto, which was more than five seconds then.

For Yamamoto, the lesser amount of water on the track was bad news because the air pressure of his wet tires was rising, which deteriorated his pace. His lead was now down to about 1.7 seconds at the end of Lap 25, so the image of Fenestraz’s car in Yamamoto’s rearview mirrors was getting bigger and bigger. However, the heavier rain came back soon after that, and it benefited Yamamoto, as he could cool down his tires and hence lower the pressure. Thus, he started to pull away from his closest rival again.

On Lap 27, Ryo Hirakawa (Carenex Team Impul) went off the track and parked his car at Victory Corner. The race control deployed the Safety Car to remove the halted car, and this SC period assisted Yamamoto further because he could save his tires. Thanks to it, he built a sufficient gap with Fenestraz by making a better restart on Lap 30 when the Safety Car came in. And Yamamoto earned bragging rights for the first time in nearly two years, driving the remaining seven laps safely.

For the series’ veteran, this was the first Super Formula victory at Motegi after claiming his first pole position at the circuit the day before. It was also the first one as the TCS Nakajima Racing driver since he joined the team at the beginning of 2021, so there were many firsts to celebrate for Yamamoto.

Fenestraz’s second-place finish pushed him to the second in the point standings, beating Hirakawa. As Nojiri finished the race in third, the championship point gap between him and Fenestraz is now 30 points.

Whereas there was no position change between the leaders after the restart, the fight for points in the mid-field attracted considerable attention from the spectators. Giuliano Alesi (Kuo Vantelin Team Tom’s) saw an opportunity when Hirakawa stopped his car and visited his pit to have a fresh set of tires before the Safety Car came out. Because of this stop, he dropped to 18th. But his pace was significantly improved, which allowed him a bunch of overtaking during the final laps.

Especially his battle against Yuhi Sekiguchi (Carenex Team Impul) for ninth climaxed on Lap 34. Alesi came very close to Sekiguchi at S Curves, but the latter skillfully took a blocking line into the next V Corner to keep his position. However, Sekiguchi slightly ran wide at Hair Pin Corner, which allowed Alesi to come side-by-side on the back straight. When they came to 90 Degree Corner at the end of the straight, Sekiguchi almost lost control of his car under braking but narrowly stayed ahead of Alesi.

The decisive moment came at Victory Corner before the pit straight. Sekiguchi’s car bobbled there again, which meant Alesi had a better acceleration from the corner. Thus, Alesi could dive into the inside of Sekiguchi at Turn 1 and move up to ninth as a reward for the bruising battle.

Alesi eventually crossed the finish line in 12th because he lost a few positions after making a costly mistake on the approach to Turn 5. On top of that, he was classified 13th in the final result because a 5-second penalty was given to him for running wide during the SC period. But there was no doubt that Alesi provided massive excitement in the closing stage of the race for the Super Formula fans at Motegi.