Written by Tarun Suresh, Edited by Vyas Ponnuri
A little less than a month after the rain-soaked, half-race at Sportsland SUGO, Super Formula Is back on the calendar. This time at a personal favourite, the Fuji Speedway (the first of three races at the circuit.)
The circuit is built on the foothills of the iconic Mount Fuji and owned by Toyota, (and controversially) a host of the Japanese Grand Prix. Covering four and a half kilometres and sixteen turns a lap, the circuit provides great racing and is insanely fun to drive around the circuit in games like Gran Turismo.
We left Sportsland SUGO with Tomoki Nojiri extending his lead in the driver’s standings and Formula 2 graduate Ayumu Iwasa snatching second in the standings from Tadasuke Makino who claimed his maiden win in Round 2.
Despite being only three races into the season, it looks to be Nojiri’s title to win, with Iwasa and Makino potentially giving him some competition. However, there could also be threats from Tsuboi, Yamamoto and Ohta for the title if they are to remain consistent with their performances and bag the occasional podium or win.
We got a glimpse of what to expect from this weekend from the testing held at this circuit two weeks ago. Makino was certainly the most impressive, topping two of the four testing sessions.
Other notable lap times come from the usual cases of Tsuboi, Iwasa and Nojiri. Ren Sato, who has finished out of the points the past two rounds, and Kenta Yamashita, who is currently fourth in the standings, also had impressive showings over the weekend.
If the previous races at this circuit are to indicate anything, it’s that Nojiri is consistently good around Fuji, as across most tracks, bagging five podiums, including two wins in the eight races held here since 2021.
Makino must not be discounted either. He has been a consistent points finisher here, albeit not as successfully as title rival Nojiri, and finished second the last time Super Formula visited the circuit.
It will be interesting to see how the rookie Iwasa performs here in Fuji. He has a massive disadvantage when it comes to experience, having not raced here since the 2017 F4 Japanese Championship. While lack of experience certainly did not show itself last round, it is still a disadvantage.
For this weekend, Hiroki Otsu will be replacing Nobaharu Matsushita in the second TGM Grand Prix car.
My predictions for this race are:
Makino
Tsuboi
Yamashita (Starts on pole position)
The weather is predicted to be cloudy with little to no rain forecasted for the weekend. The qualifying session will start at 2:00 PM on Saturday and the race will start at 3:00 PM JST on Sunday.
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