2023 SUPER FORMULA Round 1 Report

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Featuring the new chassis and tires, the Super Formula series raised its 2023 season’s curtain at Fuji Speedway. As was the case last year, the opening event had two races, Round 1 on April 8th, Saturday, and Round 2 on April 9th, Sunday, both rounds having their qualifying and race on the same day.

Instead of SF19, developed specifically for Super Formula and used until last year, the series employs the new chassis, SF23, designed in view of carbon neutrality. At the same time, the tires that Yokohama Rubber supplies to the series are also updated to more sustainable ones. In these new tires, the content ratio of renewable materials has increased to about 33%.

In this season’s 22-car field, 11 cars from six teams use Honda engines, and the same number of vehicles from the other six teams use Toyota engines. The drivers’ lineup, headed by the reigning champion Tomoki Nojiri, is also strong. By winning many intense battles, Nojiri became the back-to-back champion last year, so he has nothing to prove in his speed and race execution. And three non-Japanese drivers, namely Liam Lawson, Cem Bolukbasi, and Raoul Hyman, join the series as new faces this year.

Boosted by the further relaxation of Covid-19 countermeasures, the opening round saw 12,700 in attendance on Saturday. Unfortunately, as the practice sessions scheduled on Friday had to be canceled because of rain and strong wind, the qualifying session for Round 1 became the first opportunity for the drivers to come out on the track during the race weekend.

Considering this lack of track time, the race control dismissed the usual two-stage knock-out qualifying and decided to run the standard 45-minute timed session. Thus, the drivers could use the first half to check their cars and track conditions or adjust the car setups so their qualifying attempts began toward the end of the session. But more than 20 cars trying to set the proper qualifying time at almost the same time inevitably meant heavy traffic on the track. As a result, most drivers couldn’t improve their best lap times in these final attacks before seeing the checkered flag.

The pole position went to Nojiri, who set 1’22″062 halfway through the session. It was his fourth consecutive pole since the 2022 season’s ninth round at Suzuka. He shared the front row with Ritomo Miyata, and Lawson secured the third grid by improving his time in the session’s final minutes. Then, Toshiki Oyu, Ren Sato, and Sho Tsuboi rounded off the top six.

The race started 20 minutes past 2 p.m. Nojiri made a flawless start from the pole position and led the field through the first corner, followed by Oyu, Miyata, and Lawson. However, after a minor contact between a few cars in mid-field, Sho Tsuboi and Tadasuke Makino, who were fighting for seventh, crashed on Lap 2. And, due to debris from their vehicles, the Safety Car came out immediately.

The top four drivers at the time were Nojiri, Oyu, Lawson, and Miyata. Then TCS Nakajima Racing’s teammates, Naoki Yamamoto – always good at the race start – and Ren Sato, followed.

As soon as racing resumed on Lap 8, Lawson launched an attack on Oyu. They entered into Turn 1 side-by-side and arrived at Coca-Cola Corner, not giving a single inch to each other. However, they didn’t reduce their speed enough to negotiate the corner, so they went off the track. The incident handed Miyata second place, but Lawson managed to minimize the loss of the course off and overtook the Team Tom’s driver at Dunlop Corner on the same lap. Now Team Mugen’s drivers were running in first and second.

Lawson reduced the gap with Nojiri little by little, but it wasn’t close enough to make a move when the 41-lap race reached its halfway point. At the end of Lap 21, Lawson headed to the pit lane to do the mandatory tire change with the intention to undercut the race leader, and the team finished the pit work in about six seconds.

Nojiri reacted to this and visited his pit on the next lap. The tire change at his stop took slightly longer than Lawson’s, but the reigning champion returned to the track just ahead of his teammate. But it was a big chance for Lawson because his tires were already warm enough after his out lap. So while Nojiri managed to hold up at Turn 1, the Kiwi challenged the Japanese teammate at 100R Corner from the outside and successfully made a clean move to become the new leader.

On the other hand, Miyata and Ryo Hirakawa opted for going longer. It meant they tried to gain some time on the track and get ahead of others when they finished their stops. Especially, Hirakawa stayed out until the end of Lap 31 and managed to beat Yamamoto, who was running effectively in third, when he rejoined the race after the tire change.

As the Team Impul driver locked up under the braking for Turn 1 and ran wide, Yamamoto once regained the position he had. But Hirakawa picked up his pace as his tires got warmed up properly and started to put heavy pressure on Yamamoto. On Lap 36, he finally overtook the Nakajima Racing driver at Turn 1 and moved up to third, which meant his overcutting strategy worked.

Soon after the position change, Nirei Fukuzumi and Giuliano Alesi collided while running down to Turn 1. And since the former’s car crashed into the guard rails and the latter’s car halted after it just got through the corner, the second Safety Car period of the day was called for with five laps to go. However, removing the cars and clearing up the track took some time, so the checkered flag was shown at the end of Lap 41 when the whole field was still running behind the Safety Car.

This meant Lawson scored the debut win in Super Formula. With Nojiri finishing in second, Team Mugen achieved a 1-2 finish in the season opener. Hirakawa came in third, even though he started the race from the seventh grid.