2024 SUPER FORMULA Round 6 Report

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The sixth race meeting of the 2024 Super Formula series took place at Fuji Speedway. The event was a doubleheader, which means two races in a weekend, so both the qualifying and race of the series’ sixth round were held on Saturday, October 12th.

Nirei Fukuzumi (Kids Com Team KCMG) looked to be strong when he took his second pole position of the season, but Sho Tsuboi (Vantelin Team Tom’s) claimed his season’s second race win.

A 90-minute free practice on Friday, October 11th, preceded the sixth round’s qualifying and race. Ren Sato (Ponos Nakajima Racing) led the session by setting the fastest time, 1’22″769, and Ayumu Iwasa (Team Mugen) followed in second, but the gap between them was just 0.033 seconds. Fukuzumi came in third, only 0.141 seconds behind the leader, and seemed confident about his performance in qualifying.

However, Fukuzumi surprisingly ended Q1 of the qualifying on Saturday in sixth in Group B. He was actually 0.570 seconds slower than the group’s top qualifier, Tomoki Nojiri (Team Mugen). Although he could make his way into Q2, the time difference was quite significant, especially considering his high expectations on the day before. What’s more, the drivers assigned to Group B, including him, had less time to make setup adjustments after Q1 than those who were in Group A and had ended the session earlier did.

Still, Fukuzumi made the adjustment in the limited time work, and his qualifying time confirmed it. He improved his own time in Q1 by almost a second, and his fastest time in Q2, 1’21″726, was good enough to secure his second pole position of the season since the fourth round at Fuji. Kakunoshin Ohta (Docomo Team Dandelion Racing) came in second and took the front-row position. But he might be a little disappointed because he lost the battle with Fukuzumi by only 0.004 seconds. The second row was filled with Team Mugen drivers, as Nojiri ended Q2 in third and Iwasa in fourth.

About five hours later, after the qualifying session had concluded, the 41-lap race got underway at 14:50. Fukuzumi and Ohta on the front row made a decent start, but Iwasa did it much better than them. The Team Mugen driver had already led the field when they entered the first corner and completed the opening lap in the lead. But it didn’t last long because Nojiri managed to overtake him at 100R Corner on the next lap, and Tsuboi also passed him on Lap 3.

To turn around the situation, Iwasa opted to change his tires at the earliest opportunity. So, he headed to the pit lane at the end of Lap 10 and tried to regain the lead with his fresh tires. At the time, the gap between the interim leader, Nojiri, and Iwasa was about 39 seconds, but the latter started to shave off the time gap, being followed by Ohta, who also made the tire change on the same lap.

Nojiri visited his pit box when he completed Lap 21 and rejoined the race in the position just behind Ohta. On his out-lap, he had to give way to Kamui Kobayashi (Kids Com Team KCMG) at ADVAN Corner because his tires were still cold. Nojiri could overtake Kobayashi on the next lap on the pit straight, using the OverTake System, but the battling with the KCMG driver cost Nojiri a few precious seconds. And this allowed Tsuboi, who changed his tires at the end of Lap 23, to rejoin the race just ahead of him.

Nojiri immediately tried to pass Tsuboi but made a small mistake when he approached the ADVAN Corner. He almost lost control of his car, which was associated with some tire smoke caused by a brake lock-up. Because of this, the gap between Tsuboi and Nojiri grew larger than before, and Kobayashi began to put pressure on Nojiri from behind.

Nojiri fended off Kobayashi’s attack from 300R to the 13th Corner on the same lap, but they became side-by-side at Supra Corner and went into the final turn in the same positions. Then the ex-Grand Prix driver won this fight at Turn 1, so Nojiri fell back to effective fifth.

Starting from the 11th grid, Kobayashi gained two places on the opening lap before changing tires at the end of Lap 11. This early stop strategy worked very well for him, and he jumped up through the field. After overtaking Nojiri to move up to fourth, on Lap 31, he passed Ohta, whose pace dropped in the closing stage, on the pit straight, which pushed him up to third place.

A few laps earlier, on Lap 27, Tsuboi snatched second from Ohta. And on this lap, the last of the late stoppers headed to the pit lane, and Iwasa returned to the top of the leaderboard. However, Tsuboi had much fresher tires than the Team Mugen driver did and was already running only three seconds behind the leader. Moreover, he set the race’s fastest lap on this lap and closed on Iwasa further.

When they completed Lap 30, Iwasa’s lead was reduced to less than a second. At the final corner of the lap, Tsuboi took a slightly tighter line and became abreast on the pit straight, helped by OTS. Iwasa narrowly defended his position from Tsuboi at Turn 1 by braking as late as possible, but then he made a slight mistake when he approached Coca Cola Corner. This allowed Tsuboi to take up the space that his rival inadvertently created, and the Team Tom’s driver became the new race leader by passing Iwasa at 100R Corner.

Tsuboi extended his lead to about four seconds in the remaining ten laps before receiving the checkered flag first. It was his second victory of the season. Iwasa finished in second place for the second time this season, which must be frustrating for him because he led the race from his early tire change to the closing stage. Kobayashi came in third and put an end to his 5-year podium drought since the 2019 season’s Round 5.