Super Formula round five recap: The reigning champion puts an end to Dandelion dominance
- Tarun Suresh
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
Written by Tarun Suresh
Round five at Autopolis started with qualifying being postponed to Sunday due to torrential rain and low visibility conditions. As opposed to the usual qualifying schedule, which had the drivers divided into two groups for qualifying one, and the top 6 of each group making it to qualifying two where the twelve drivers fight for pole, the qualifying session was a shootout between the 22 drivers.
However, most of the drivers could not complete their final qualifying laps as an incident between Sacha Fenestraz and Tomoki Nojiri brought the session to an abrupt end.
Nojiri ended up on pole, Yamashita qualified second, with the KCMG’s of the returning Kamui Kobayashi and Nirei Fukuzumi followed closely, and reigning champion Sho Tsuboi rounded off the top 5.
Championship leaders Kakunoshin Ohta and Tadasuke Makino qualified only ninth and thirteenth respectively.
Tsuboi and Iwasa pulled off amazing starts, jumping to second and third, respectively, as Nojiri held the lead.
The biggest losers at the start were Igor Omura Fraga, who dropped from sixth to twelfth, and Ohta, dropping down to eighteenth. Fenestraz also stalled the start.
Fraga and Fenestraz were the first to pit, on lap two. Makino and Oshima followed them on the next lap. A few other losers at the start, like Kobayashi and Atsushi Miyake, also followed.
Iwasa pitted on lap 15, the first from the top five to do so. Nojiri and Tsuboi followed on lap 19.
A fast stop from Team TOM's helped Tsuboi close down the gap to Nojiri from three seconds to less than a second, and Tsuboi finished the job soon after exiting the pits. Tsuboi’s net lead didn’t last that long, however, as Iwasa soon got past Tsuboi on warmer tires.
Zak O’Sullivan spun out of the race on lap 20, bringing out the safety car. The race resumed on lap 24. Makino, on significantly older tires, struggled to hold his own, losing fourth place to Yamashita at the restart. Soon after, he lost a place to Ren Sato as well.
On lap 28, a mechanical error saw Iwasa retire from the lead of the race, losing yet another potential win due to mechanical issues.
This promoted Tsuboi to the lead, which the Saitama native maintained until the checkered flag. Dandelion's six-race win streak came to an end at the hands of the #1 Team TOM’s car.
Tsuboi celebrated his birthday early on Saturday, and a win from fifth at Autopolis is certainly a birthday gift for himself that he will remember for a long time.
Two-time champion Nojiri followed closely to finish in second and bag his first podium of the season. Kenta Yamashita secured the final spot on the podium.
Ren Sato and Sena Sakaguchi finished an impressive fourth and fifth, respectively.
Makino finished sixth and promoted himself to the championship lead. The championship leader heading into the race, Kakunoshin Ohta, finished only thirteenth in what was surely a race to forget.
Makino now leads the championship by four points ahead of his teammate.
With his win, Sho Tsuboi is now in third and has closed the gap to the leader to just fourteen points.
The next round is a double header at Fuji, the only circuit on the calendar that Tsuboi had won at before this weekend. He’ll be looking to keep his three-race win streak at Fuji going and potentially closing the gap to the championship leaders.
The next race weekend will take place from 18th to 20th July.
