2022 SUPER FORMULA Round 9 Report

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As the season is changing from autumn to early winter, the Japanese domestic race championships are heading to the season’s finales. The 2022 Super Formula Championship had its final meeting on the last weekend of October. The doubleheader at Suzuka Circuit started with the ninth round, which had both the qualifying and the race on Saturday, October 29th.

The free practice session took place on the day before, Friday, October 28th. The fastest driver in this session was Toshiki Oyu (TCS Nakajima Racing), who won the pole position in the previous Motegi round. The front-runners of the title fight, Sacha Fenestraz (Kondo Racing) and Ryo Hirakawa (Carenex Team Impul), were also going strong and ended the practice in third and fifth, respectively. On the other hand, the championship leader, Tomoki Nojiri (Team Mugen), was a full one second slower than Oyu and settled for the lowly 16th.

While the drivers ran on different programs, the gap was huge. Therefore, the technical meeting between Nojiri and Team Mugen to find a way to resurge lasted well into the evening. And it clearly paid off, as he showed an impressive recovery in the qualifying session, which began at 9:30 on Saturday morning.

The forecast said it would be fair weather throughout the three days of the race weekend at Suzuka. With a clear autumn sky over the circuit, the air was refreshing and comfortable on Saturday morning. Many expected a good performance from Fenestraz, considering his speed in the practice session, but he was in reality only ninth in Group A of Q1 and one second slower than the fastest of the group, Tadasuke Makino (Docomo Team Dandelion Racing). As a result, Fenestraz failed to move on to Q2 and ended the qualifying in 17th.

Similarly, Hirakawa in Group B also fell short of expectations. While he was the third fastest in Q1, he lost momentum somehow in Q2 and had to settle for the 11th grid. This meant that two of three title contenders would start the race out of the top 10 grids.

In stark contrast to them, Nojiri seemed to find something overnight. He survived Q1 in fourth place and then clocked a faster qualifying time than any other driver in Q2, claiming his fifth pole position of the season. The reigning champion expressed his delight by holding up his fists harder than ever, as the result was made by teamwork to recover from the slump the day before. Ritomo Miyata (Kuo Vantelin Team Tom’s) lost to Nojiri because of a slight mistake in Sector 3, and Oyu came in third.

During the interval after the qualifying, the long-awaited pit walk was held for the first time in the season in the final two rounds. It was also good for the drivers who had opportunities to feel the fans’ support directly before starting the race.

The 31-lap race got underway on time, and the wind got stronger than in the qualifying session. Nojiri led the field at the first corner, while Miyata made a bad start from the front row. Consequently, Oyu was handed second place, followed by Ukyo Sasahara (Team Mugen), who also gained two spots from the fifth grid.

Oyu and Sasahara battled hard from the opening lap, becoming side-by-side sometimes. And at the beginning of Lap 4, Sasahara utilized OverTake System to pass Oyu on the pit straight and moved up to second. Then, with Nojiri leading, the Team Mugen pair gradually pulled away from the Nakajima Racing driver, and the gap between Sasahara and Oyu grew to four seconds on Lap 9.

When the pit stop window opened at the end of Lap 10, Sasahara headed to the box, and Oyu followed his path on the same lap. Therefore, their teams’ tire-changing work could influence the fight’s outcome, and Sasahara’s stop was a bit longer than Oyu’s. So the latter closed into the former on the pit lane, but Sasahara pushed hard on his out lap and built a sufficient gap immediately.

Reacting to these two, Nojiri also visited the pit on the next lap. This time, Team Mugen’s crew completed the tire change in a minimum amount of time and sent the driver back to the track. Nojiri found that he still had a distance with Sasahara that was almost equal to half the length of the pit straight, but the gap shrunk quickly because the teammate had already warmed his tires adequately during his out lap.

Sasahara caught up with Nojiri at Degner Curve on the lap and overtook him by diving to Nojiri’s inside at Hairpin Corner. With this move, Sasahara took the effective lead while he was still running 13th on the leaderboard.

When the Team Mugen pair was done with their pit stops, Miyata became the interim race leader. Making the most of the clear space ahead of him, the Team Tom’s driver tried to build a sufficient gap with Sasahara, pushing at low-to-mid 1’40” level lap times. But his hope was dashed, as Sasahara and Nojiri could keep a good pace, taking advantage of their fresher tires, and Miyata couldn’t increase the gap with them as he wanted.

Miyata came into the pit at the end of Lap 25 and was supposed to rejoin the race between Oyu and Yuhi Sekiguchi (Carenex Team Impul), who were fighting for third. However, the tire change work on his car took longer than usual, as something went wrong with his left-hand rear wheel, so he was in sixth, just behind Ren Sato (Team Goh), when he resumed racing.

When Hirakawa steered to the pit lane as the last one to do so, Sasahara emerged at the top of the leaderboard. And he crossed the finish line first, with a 12.5-second lead to Nojiri at the end. It was his second victory of the season since the sixth round at Fuji Speedway.

By finishing in second, Nojiri clinched his back-to-back driver’s championship title. At the same time, Team Mugen won the team’s title for the first time, thanks to the one-two finish by Sasahara and Nojiri. Then, Sato came in third and accomplished his first podium finish in Super Formula after overtaking Sekiguchi and Oyu towards the end.

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