2023 SUPER FORMULA Round 5 Report

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The fifth round of the 2023 Super Formula championship was held at Sportsland Sugo in Miyagi Prefecture. Here, Ritomo Miyata (Vantelin Team Tom’s) notched his second race win, following his maiden Super Formula victory in the third round at Suzuka, and became the championship leader.

After the fourth round at Autopolis in Kyushu, the Super Formula caravan traveled north and got to Sportsland Sugo, located on the outskirts of Sendai City, also known as The City of Trees, for its fifth round of the series.

The weather was inclement on Friday of the race week, June 16th, when the teams and the staffs were at work setting up, which reminded them of Friday at Autopolis. But it changed completely on Saturday morning, as the sky was clear with strong sunshine streaming down to the circuit, and the track activities began on the dry surfaces.

Since Tomoki Nojiri (Team Mugen), the sick absentee in the previous round, returned, all 22 regular drivers met at Sugo. In the practice session on Saturday morning, Miyata was the only driver who set a lap time below one minute and six seconds, and Tadasuke Makino (Docomo Team Dandelion Racing) and Kenta Yamashita (Kondo Racing) followed him.

The air /track temperatures were at 29/39 degrees centigrade when the usual knockout qualifying session kicked off. The track of Sportsland Sugo is the shortest and smallest among the Japanese circuits that Super Formula visits, which means the chances of an accident or an interruption by a red flag due to it, are high.

Therefore, some drivers opted for starting the session with a “tentative” qualifying attempt as a precaution against an unexpected session halt, whereas they usually make their all-out attack in the final minutes after checking the car’s setup and inspecting the track conditions.

In fact, Cem Bolukbasi’s crash on his qualifying lap in Group A of Q1 caused a yellow flag around the spot, and the drivers, who encountered the yellow-flagged section during their qualifying attempt by that ill fortune, had to give up the time set on that particular lap.

For example, Kazuto Kotaka (Kondo Racing) lost his qualifying time, which was the sixth fastest in the group, and dropped out from the fight for Q2. And it promoted Ren Sato (TCS Nakajima Racing) to sixth and last place in Group A to get through to Q2, despite his actual qualifying time being the seventh fastest.

Setting aside the drama, Miyata, who was also in Group A, made his attempt at the perfect timing and cleared the bar for Q2 as the top qualifier in the group, followed by Nojiri.

The Q1 for Group B went smoothly, and Sho Tsuboi (P.Mu/Cerumo Inging) put his name in the top slot. The championship leader, Liam Lawson (Team Mugen), came in second, and Toshiki Oyu (TGM Grand Prix), who has always been remarkable in the qualifying this year, was third in the group.

The fight in Q2 was hectic regarding position changes, but Oyu was at the top when the session ended, marking his second pole position of the season. Miyata claimed the second grid, and Nojiri followed in the third.

The fine weather continued on Sunday morning, but some light clouds appeared in the afternoon. Consequently, the air/track temperatures when the race commenced were 28/36 degrees, slightly lower than those in the qualifying session.

At the beginning of the 51-lap race, Nojiri and Ryo Hirakawa (Itochu Enex Team Impul) made terrible starts, which were uncharacteristic fails for them, and lost positions. On the back end of the grids, Nobuharu Matsushita (B-Max Racing Team) couldn’t leave his grid and stopped his car on the track. On top of this, Giuliano Alesi (Vantelin Team Tom’s) and Yuhi Sekiguchi (Itochu Enex Team Impul) collided just ahead of Turn 4, so the race control sent the Safety Car out before the field completed the opening lap.

Sekiguchi’s car drove over its own front wing and dragged it. So the car had heavy damage, and he came back to the pit box to retire. Alesi once continued and rejoined the field behind the Safety Car, but he also found something was broken on the car and brought it back to the pit. Thus, both of them prematurely ended the race.

The racing resumed at the beginning of Lap 5. The race leader, Oyu, remained in the same position, and Miyata, Tsuboi, Lawson, and Makino came after him. When the pit stop window opened on Lap 10, Makino was the first driver to head to the pit lane to change his tires. And Nojiri did the same on the next lap and succeeded in getting ahead of Makino when he rejoined.

At the same time, there was another position change at the top of the field. Using the OverTake System at Final Corner, Miyata overtook Oyu on the pit straight without hesitation to become the new race leader. On the other hand, Oyu’s pace started to decline, and Tsuboi also passed him on the next lap.

Things went from bad to worse for Oyu when he tried to defend his position from Tsuboi, as he ended up losing balance and going off the track at Turn 1. Although Oyu could continue after returning on the tarmac, he dropped to eighth because of this mistake. After changing his tires on Lap15, he strived to recover but only to return to the pit later, retiring the car due to a mechanical problem.

As the Nojiri was the leading early stopper at the time, Miyata calculated the gap with the Team Mugen driver and made his pit stop at the end of Lap 17. The Tom’s team did a perfect job at the box and sent Miyata back to the track. Of course, Nojiri wanted to make a move before Miyata’s tires were warmed up, so he pushed at the maximum pace, which led to a tail-to-nose battle from Final Corner on Miyata’s out lap.

Still, Miyata blocked the inside at Turn 1 and defended his position through Turn 2 as well. With his tires kicked in around here, he could pick up his pace and pull away from Nojiri inch by inch.

The interim race leader at the point was Tsuboi, leading Lawson, Yamashita, and Hirakawa. But their paces were slower than the drivers who had already had a fresh set of tires at the stop, and the gap between Tsuboi and Miyata was decreasing by degrees.

Tsuboi extended his first stint and finally steered to the pit entry at the end of Lap 35. But he only had a 12-second cushion against Miyata then, so he had to give way to the Tom’s driver and found himself running in ninth when he returned to the track.

Tsuboi’s stop gave Lawson a clear space in front of him, and the Kiwi was able to improve his pace a bit, trying to gain a gap with Miyata as much as possible. However, he had already driven a very long stint, and the remaining laps were limited. Therefore, he had no choice but to come into the pit box when completing Lap 41 and dropped to seventh when rejoining the field.

Now there was no one ahead of Miyata. And his pace was almost one second faster than the drivers behind him. Eventually, he had a vast 22-second gap with Nojiri in the second when the checkered flag fell. The victory was Miyata’s second this season since the Suzuka round. With some extra points for his qualifying result, Miyata earned a lot of championship points this weekend and got ahead of Lawson in the point standings to become the new leader.

Nojiri finished in second and proved that he was fit perfectly. Makino came in third, and Kazuya Oshima (Docomo Business Rookie) defended his fourth place from Lawson, who had much fresher tires and put heavy pressure on Oshima’s final laps.