“I don’t need to do something crazy”: Iwasa on the fight for the Championship, the incident with Fraga and more
- Tarun Suresh
- 8 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Written by Tarun Suresh
Ayumu Iwasa has firmly rooted himself as a contender in the fight for the Super Formula Drivers’ Championship this year. He spoke to DIVEBOMB after Round 11 about his fight for the title and the incident that ended his race today.
On the opening lap of Round 11 at Suzuka, contact with rookie sensation Igor Fraga took Iwasa out of the race, robbing him of a points finish in one of the three races this weekend. Fraga was behind Iwasa and tried to get past him through one of the S Curves, but made contact, which resulted in the latter being taken out of the race. Iwasa expressed his confusion at the stewards’ decision to not give Fraga a penalty.
“First of all, I think we need to see what is the driving guideline. For me, we can push really hard to dive into the corner, but we need to respect each other as well. I think I could’ve done more to avoid the accident because I’m fighting for the championship, that’s for sure. In terms of the decision [and] the investigation… It’s not understandable. If it’s okay, I will just push and carry much more speed into the corner next to the car, and even if I hit the car, I [will] get no penalty. I don’t need to compare anymore because that’s done, and I need to focus on tomorrow.”
Despite the woes of round 11, Iwasa will start the two remaining races in fourth and on pole position. Despite the DNF, he remains in a good spot to mount a challenge for the title. He reflected on his starting positions and his lack of data heading into the season finale due to the incident.
“Actually, one more bad thing is that we couldn’t see the race performance today, so I don’t know if we have pace or not in the long run. So, that’s a bit of a tricky part. I think we had a good pace in qualifying, so it won’t be too bad. We will do enough to prepare for tomorrow. I will start from P4 tomorrow morning and P1 in the afternoon, so we will have a good opportunity again. I will need to keep focusing and doing my best.”
Iwasa’s teammate, two-time champion Tomoki Nojiri, won Round 11, starting second. Iwasa shared his feelings for tomorrow based on Nojiri’s race and the Free Practice sessions.
“Honestly… I don’t think he had the best pace. I think car 6 (Kakunoshin Ohta) was the best, but still, Tomoki was not bad. So it's a good reference. We have done a long run test yesterday, and I think we are not bad. We are a little bit better than Tomoki, for example. That’s why I think we are not bad in long run pace. So it’s not negative at all for tomorrow.”
If the grid for the remaining two races were to finish exactly where they qualified, Iwasa would win the title. He spoke about how he needs to keep his remaining races clean and fix the start, which cost him a position in turn one today.
“Actually, I didn’t think about that after today’s race, but it’s good. It means that I don’t need to do something crazy. Just need to do my race, and if I have an opportunity to gain some positions tomorrow morning, I will do that without taking too much risk. In the afternoon, we are again in pole position. So we need to fix the problem of the start first because we [have] had a bit of a problem since the beginning of the weekend, so we need to do it. I think if we have a good start, we have a good pace.”
Consistency has been the name of the game for Iwasa. Every time he has finished a race, it has been on the podium, barring round 9, which was a race held entirely under safety car conditions. He reflected on his season so far heading into the season finale.
“..It’s really up and down. It’s always like podium or DNF or something. But it means that we always have good speed. Because even if we DNFed or something, we showed good speed every time. That is really positive. I think we are one of the fastest cars and the fastest drivers on the track. It means that we need to put it all together. That’s what we could do in SUGO. We took pole position and we took the win there. In Fuji, I made a mistake in the wet. Today, I crashed. We need to put it all together. I think if we do it, I think the result will come.”
Iwasa is 16.5 points behind Sho Tsuboi and tied for second with Kakunoshin Ohta with two races to go. He will be starting ahead of Tsuboi in both races, with Tsuboi only starting seventh and ninth. Whatever the outcome tomorrow may be, Iwasa has had a phenomenal season so far and has proven himself to be one of the mainstays of the series.
