2023 SUPER FORMULA Round 8 Report

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The eighth round of the 2023 Super Formula series took place on Saturday, October 28th, at Suzuka Circuit in Mie Prefecture. The season’s final meeting of the series was a doubleheader, combining this one and the ninth round held on Sunday, October 29th.

Tomoki Nojiri (Team Mugen) took his fourth pole position of the season in the qualifying. He was aiming at his third consecutive championship title despite still lagging in the point standings from a couple of rivals. The race was cut short by the red flag due to a big accident in the very early stage.

In this round, Hiroki Otsu stepped in for Naoki Yamamoto (TCS Nakajima Racing), who was absent because of a Super GT crash injury. And shortly before the start of the weekend, TGM Grand Prix announced that Toshiki Oyu wouldn’t drive one of their cars, and Riki Okusa would replace him. Okusa has some of experience in Super GT, driving a GT300 car, but had never driven in a Super Formula race before.

Since it was a doubleheader weekend, the drivers had only one 90-minute practice session on Friday before the qualifying sessions and races of the two rounds. Therefore, the practice was even more important than usual.

Nojiri, who won the previous round at Motegi from the pole position, certainly had momentum and was the fastest in the practice session. Yet the championship leader, Ritomo Miyata (Vantelin Team Tom’s), came in second, and Liam Lawson (Team Mugen), who was in second in the point standings, ended the session in fourth. So, all three title contenders were in their top form.

In the qualifying session on Saturday, Sho Tsuboi (P.Mu/Cermo Inging) led Group A of Q1, followed by Lawson, just 0.001 seconds shy of Tsuboi’s time. In addition to them, Kakunoshin Ohta (Docomo Team Dandelion Racing), Kenta Yamashita (Kondo Racing), Ren Sato (TCS Nakajima Racing), and Nobuharu Matsushita (B-Max Racing Team) got through into Q2 from the group.

Nojiri and Miyata were assigned to Group B, and they easily made their way to Q2 by ending the session in first and third, respectively.

Q2 didn’t go smoothly, though. Sato went off the track at Degner Curve and hit the tire barriers, which caused the red flag and the stoppage of the session. Because it was when most drivers were on their qualifying attempt, they had to give it another shot after the restart.

Nojiri displayed his incredible mental toughness here. Unlike most others, Lawson had to rely on the used tires for his second qualifying attempt. He went out on the track behind Nojiri but then tried to pass his teammate, probably because he wanted a faster out-lap than Nojiri, as the latter needed to take time to warm up his fresh tires. As a result, they had some communication mix-up on their out-lap, which annoyed Nojiri somehow. But the reigning champion kept calm and set 1’37″292, which was by far the fastest of all, beating the top two at the time, Ryo Hirakawa (Itochu Enex Team Impul) and Lawson.

Then Miyata clocked 1’37”599 and came in second, but no one could set any faster lap time than Nojiri’s. At the end of the session, Lawson dropped to seventh. As the top three qualifiers are awarded the championship points – three points for the pole sitter, two for second, and one for third, Nojiri could close the point gap with Miyata and Lawson even before the race started.

Three and a half hours later, the race got started. Whereas Nojiri made a clean start, Miyata on the second grid allowed Ohta to get ahead of him from the second row. However, Ohta used the OverTake System to pass Miyata, meaning he couldn’t resort to it again for about a lap. So, the Team Tom’s driver could hit back on the next lap by passing Ohta at Turn 1 with the help of OTS.

After returning to where he started, Miyata rapidly closed in on Nojiri, so many expected that the fight for the lead would heat up. But, on Lap 4, Otsu and Ukyo Sasahara (Vantelin Team Tom’s) collided at 130 R Corner, and both crashed hard into the barriers on the outside. Particularly, Sasahara’s car was broken in half when it finally halted after taking off from the ground and plunging into the debris catch fence.

Fortunately, Otsu could walk away from his car, which was caught by a TV camera, and it was announced that Sasahara was unharmed. But the race was stopped by the red flag and subsequently terminated. The main reason was that the catch fence poles were damaged, and the race couldn’t be restarted before they were restored. But it was obvious that such repair work in a short period of time was impossible.

Therefore, the position of each driver at the end of Lap 3 became the race’s final result. The winner was Nojiri, Miyata came in second, and Ohta in third. Since the race ended before 75% of the original race distance was completed, the championship points awarded to the top ten finishers were reduced by half. It meant Nojiri got ten points, 7.5 points for Miyata, and Lawson added 2.5 points to his tally by finishing in sixth. Now Nojiri moved up to second in the point standings, and the gap with the leader, Miyata, came down to 6.5 points.