2024 SUPER FORMULA Round 8 Report

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The final race meeting of the 2024 Super Formula series took place at Suzuka Circuit. As was the case in the previous Fuji rounds, the event adopted the doubleheader format, which has two races on the weekend.

In the eighth and penultimate round held on Saturday, November 9th, Kakunoshin Ohta (Docomo Team Dandelion Racing) took his first-ever pole position in Super Formula. And then, he made it into his first win of the season after leading the race all the way to the finish.

Just before the weekend, the three-time Japanese domestic top formula champion, Naoki Yamamoto (Ponos Nakajima Racing), announced his retirement from the Super Formula series at the end of this season. Reacting to his statement, many fans visited the circuit with the fan gear for Yamamoto on Friday, November 8th, when a 90-minute free practice was run, despite the fact it was a normal weekday. The retiring driver repaid it by clocking the fastest time in the session in front of them.

The qualifying session for the eighth round began at 9:05 on Saturday. In Group A of Q1, Tadasuke Makino (Docomo Team Dandelion Racing) took the lead, beating Yamamoto in second by 0.2 seconds. The Q1 session for Group B didn’t go smoothly, as Iori Kimura (San-Ei Gen with B-Max) went off the track when every driver had just begun their qualifying laps. The race control extended the session for three minutes so that everyone would have a proper opportunity to make their qualifying attempt.

It was surprising that Tomoki Nojiri (Team Mugen) ended the session in seventh and failed to move into Q2, probably because he couldn’t heat his tires sufficiently. The fastest driver in Group B was Sho Tsuboi (Vantelin Team Tom’s). As if emulating his championship rival, Makino, he also surpassed Ohta in second by 0.2 seconds.

However, Ohta was the star in Q2, when the all-important pole position was fought. While Ayumu Iwasa (Team Mugen) was faster than him in Sector 1 and 2 in the crucial lap, Ohta set the overall fastest sector time in Sector 3 and outdid the Team Mugen driver in the total lap time. It was his first-ever pole position in his second Super Formula season. He said later in the post-qualifying press conference, “I had a few things that I wanted to try out in terms of driving and did them all in Q2. I believe the improvement from the changes resulted in this pole position and the considerable time gap with the driver in second.”

Iwasa came in second, and Ren Sato (Ponos Nakajima Racing) took the third grid, which was his season’s best qualifying result. The leaders in Q1 sessions, Tsuboi and Makino, improved their times in Q2, but it wasn’t enough to join the fight for the pole position. Yamamoto, the fastest driver in the practice, secured the sixth grid for the start of the race, which would begin about five hours later.

The fine autumn weather continued into the afternoon, so the air/track temperatures reached 21/31 degrees centigrade just before the race’s start. Since the other activities didn’t end on time, the Super Formula’s formation lap got underway at 14:40, 10 minutes later than planned. The 21 drivers returned to their grids after the lap, and the 31-lap race kicked off.

Ohta, the pole sitter, had a good start and led the race when he entered the first corner. On the other hand, Iwasa, on the other side of the front row, couldn’t leave his grid due to a mechanical malfunction and had to begin the race from the bottom of the field. Consequently, Sato, Makino, and Tsuboi automatically gained a position and were in second, third, and fourth at the end of the opening lap, respectively.

Starting from the 14th grid as the result of being knocked out in Q1, Nojiri jumped up to 11th during the first lap and further improved his position by overtaking one on the next lap and another on Lap 5.

When the field completed the tenth lap, the tire change window opened. Five drivers, including Makino and Nojiri, headed to the pit lane as soon as they were allowed to do so. Reacting to them, Sato and Tsuboi followed suit on the next lap.

But Sato had a mishap at the stop. His left-hand rear wheel wasn’t attached correctly after the tire change, and it went off immediately after he left the pit box, resulting in the car stopping on the pit lane. The team crew pushed it back to the garage, but his race ended there.

Things went much smoother for Tsuboi as his pit stop was clean, and he could rejoin the race ahead of Makino, making a successful overcut against the Dandelion Racing driver.

Meanwhile, Ohta led the race comfortably, and Yamamoto was running in the interim second as others had visited the pit. They made their stop at the end of Lap 12, and Ohta was still in the effective lead when he returned to the track. When all drivers had done their mandatory stop on Lap 19, Ohta was at the top of the whole field, followed by Tsuboi and Makino. Yamamoto was running in seventh, which meant a few drivers managed to undercut him by stopping early.

On Lap 19, the Safety Car was deployed because Hibiki Taira (Itochu Enex Team Impul) lost his right-hand rear wheel just after he passed the pit exit. He parked the car on the trackside immediately, but the loose wheel went further ahead and finally stopped at Turn 2 after going through Turn 1. The wheel was taken away during the Safety Car period, and racing resumed on Lap 23.

However, the Safety Car had to come out on the next lap again. It was because Kazuya Oshima (Docomo Business Rookie) and Ukyo Sasahara (Vantelin Team Tom’s) made contact at Spoon Curve on Lap 24, and the former’s car halted. When the race was restarted on Lap 28, there were only three laps left to the finish.

For the remaining three laps, Ohta kept renewing his personal best time lap after lap and marked the race’s fastest lap on the final lap before receiving the checkered flag first. Tsuboi and Makino closely fought for second, both using the OverTake System, and Tsuboi managed to remain in the position he took after the pit stop and increased the championship point gap with Makino to 18.5.

Nojiri ultimately moved up to fifth and made a well-earned points finish. However, as his point deficit against Tsuboi now grew to more than 20, Nojiri’s title hope was gone when this eighth round came to an end.

Therefore, the outcome of the championship battle between Tsuboi and Makino was to be seen in the ninth and final round of the season. As neither of them has ever been the Super Formula champion in the past, it would be a fight for the maiden title crown for them.