2024 SUPER FORMULA Round 5 Report

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The fifth round of the 2024 Super Formula series took place at Mobility Resort Motegi in Tochigi Prefecture. Since the series consists of nine races in seven meetings, this was the first of the second half, which meant more focus was being put on the championship fight.

After the fourth round, Tomoki Nojiri (Team Mugen), who won back-to-back titles in 2021 and 2022, led the championship, and Sho Tsuboi (Vanterin Team Tom’s) followed, 9.5 points behind Nojiri. The gap with the leader and Tadasuke Makino (Docomo Team Dandelion Racing) in third was 13 points. In other words, the three winners of this season’s first four races are the top three of the point standings.

This round was the halfway point of the 2024 season, and five races were remaining, including this one at Motegi. As the two meetings left, at Fuji in October and Suzuka in November, will be held as doubleheaders, if a driver dominates one of those weekends, they can earn big points. As such, who will win the championship title remains to be seen, but this fifth round was still quite important for the drivers as a steppingstone to success in the final two meetings.

Kenta Yamashita (Kondo Racing) led the free practice before the qualifying on Saturday, August 24th. He has never failed to move into Q2 this season and has undoubtedly been one of the regular top qualifiers. The two drivers of Ponos Nakajima Racing, Ren Sato and Naoki Yamamoto, were on the way up recently and confirmed it by ending the session in second and third. Then, other regular pole position contenders, Toshiki Oyu (Vertex Partners Cerumo/Inging), Makino, and Nirei Fukuzumi (Kids Com Team KCMG), rounded out the top six. The gap between Yamashita and Kakunoshi Ohta (Docomo Team Dandelion Racing) in seventh was just 0.36 seconds, so many expected a very tight qualifying session.

The qualifying, run in the usual knock-out format, started with the Q1 session for Group A. The fastest driver in this group was Ohta, beating Yamashita, who was at the top in the free practice, by 0.273 seconds. Other drivers in the top six who survived the fight for Q2 were Oyu, Tsuboi, Sato, and Yuji Kunimoto (Itochu Enex Team Impul). After claiming the pole position in the second round at Autopolis, Ayumu Iwasa (Team Mugen) had always been one of the top three qualifiers in the previous two rounds but ended the session in seventh this time, just 0.007 seconds behind Kunimoto.

As Makino was faster than anybody else in Group B, Docomo Team Dandelion Racing attained the top slots of both groups in Q1. In this group, Nojiri, Fukuzumi, Yamamoto, Sena Sakaguchi (Vertex Partners Cerumo/Inging), and Kazuto Kotaka (Kondo Racing) followed Makino to go on to Q2. Nyck de Vries was assigned to this group and drove Itochu Enex Team Impul’s no.19 car. Without any pre-event testing, however, the ex-Grand Prix driver and a regular competitor in the World Endurance Championship struggled and finished Q1 in ninth.

Most drivers in Q2 planned their qualifying attempts as a 4-lap run, which meant they would do an out-lap, a warm-up lap, a quick lap, and an in-lap. But Fukuzumi opted to skip his warm-up lap, so he naturally became the first driver to complete his quick timed lap.

“Based on the findings and my feeling in the free practice, and considering that the air and track temperatures would rise in the afternoon, I chose to do that. I knew it was a sort of gamble,” said Fukuzumi after the qualifying. The lap time he set, 1’32”379, became the first benchmark for the others, and Nojiri beat it by clocking 1’32”151 to begin with. Then, after Oyu surpassed Nojiri’s time with 1’32”091, Yamashita topped it by setting 1’31”995, which eventually became the only qualifying time below the 1’32” level. The session ended soon after Ohta marked the second fastest time, 1’32”074.

Thus, keeping the momentum going from the practice, Yamashita secured his second Super Formula pole position after an interval of seven years. Yamashita’s margin with Ohta was just 0.079 seconds, and that with Oyu was 0.09 seconds, so the top three were covered in a 0.1-second time gap. It was astonishingly close, while such results were widely expected. Nojiri, born in Ibaraki, a neighboring prefecture to Tochigi, came in fourth, and Makino followed. Yamamoto rounded off the top six on his home track as a Tochigi native.

A thunderstorm hit Mobility Resort Motegi on Saturday evening after the qualifying. But it eased during the night, and the track surfaces were dry in the morning of Sunday, August 25th. Because of a light shower, the race control declared “wet track” for free practice in the morning. But the track wasn’t actually wet, so all drivers ran the session with dry tires to do their final preparation work for the race in the afternoon.

When the 37-lap race began at 2:40 p.m., the air/track temperatures were 33/37 degrees centigrade. Compared to the last Fuji round, when the track surfaces were heated up to 50 degrees, the temperatures were moderate. Nevertheless, everybody in the paddock might feel hot and humid because the oval track around the area is said to prevent heat from dissipating.

The two drivers on the front row, Yamashita and Ohta, kept their positions at the start and went through the first corner. Directly behind them was Makino, who made a great getaway from the fifth grid. The top six at the end of the opening lap were Yamashita, Ohta, Makino, Oyu, Nojiri, and Kotaka, who gained a position by passing Yamamoto. They were very close to each other, but there was no significant position change during the early laps. And then the field entered Lap 10.

When the tire change window opened at the end of the lap, Ohta and Oyu, chasing Yamashita, headed to the pit lane. Ohta still led Oyu when they rejoined the race. While the Dandelion Racing driver slightly went off the track at the first corner after the stop, he could continue and started to catch up with Yamashita. His aim was to undercut the leader, so he steadily reduced the gap with Yamashita, making the most of his fresh set of tires.

Yamashita was still leading, but his pace was less than ideal, so Makino could close in on him. Yet, the Kondo Racing driver planned to extend his first stint for a few more laps, as he didn’t want a longer second stint, which could have led to a slower pace toward the end because of tire degradation. Having the same thoughts as Yamashita, Makino and Nojiri also chose a late-stop strategy, and they tried to push as hard as they could to build enough gap with the early stoppers.

Among these three drivers, Makino was the first to change tires. He headed to the pit lane at the end of Lap 22, and Yamashita followed suit on the next lap to protect his position from Makino’s undercut attempt. Nojiri also came into the pit on this lap.

However, Ohta got ahead of them before they resumed racing and became the new race leader. Consequently, Yamashita was now racing against Makino. Kondo Racing’s crew did a perfect job at Yamashita’s pit stop, but Makino was surprisingly fast on his out-lap and passed Yamashita at almost the same time the latter exited the pit lane. Soon after, Yamashita had to give way to Oyu and fell back to fourth.

When all drivers completed their mandatory stops, Ohta comfortably led the race. He had about a 10-second cushion against Makino in second, so his second victory of the season seemed almost certain, especially considering the number of laps left to the finish.

But Makino didn’t think so. Utilizing his much fresher tires than Ohta’s, he picked up his pace significantly. Motegi is a typical “stop and go” circuit with only a few high-speed corners, which puts a high load on the outside tires. The most important thing on this track is the so-called “traction,” i.e., how a car and its tires can accelerate efficiently from the low-speed corners. In that regard, Makino’s car with fresher tires had better traction than Ohta’s.

As a result, whereas Ohta was running at a pace in the 1’37” level, Makino set 1’35″234 on Lap 24 and 1’36″054 on the next lap, so the gap between them shrunk more than a second per lap. On Lap 34, Ohta’s lead became less than a second at the control line, and a tail-to-nose battle between the teammates broke out with only three laps to go.

On Lap 35, Makino started to change his driving line slightly from time to time, letting Ohta see his car in the rearview mirrors to put pressure, but the tactic didn’t shake Ohta up. After knocking on Ohta’s door at S-Curves, Makino finally came abreast at Hairpin Corner. But, being level-headed, Ohta took a crossing line and didn’t allow his teammate to get ahead of him at the corner’s exit. Therefore, their positions remained the same on Down Hill Straight, and they entered Lap 36 with Ohta maintaining a 0.5-second lead.

However, the fascinatingly close battle ended abruptly. At the exit of 90 Degree Corner, Ohta’s car suddenly showed strange behavior and spun. While Makino’s reflex saved him from crashing into the teammate’s car, Ohta had to retire the car on the spot because of a glitch in the throttle system. It was frustrating for him since his second Super Formula victory was just a lap and a few hundred meters away.

After something unexpected decided the fight for a win between teammates, Makino entered the final lap as the new race leader. Yamashita was catching him up by fully utilizing the OverTake System, but making up a 6-second deficit in a lap was simply impossible. Thus, Makino took his season’s second win since the second round at Autopolis and moved up to second in the point standings. Following Yamashita, Nojiri finished the race in third place and added valuable points to stay on top in the championship points.