Super Formula News
The Japanese Super Formula series has a new champion, the 32 year old Tomoki Nojiri (Team Mugen) from Ibaraki. Nojiri at the age of 32, is the fourth youngest champion in the history of Super Formula. Hiroaki Ishiura was 36 years old and is the oldest when he became champion in 2017.
Nojiri has, in his career, always raced in Japan or the Pacific but this is his first major title since racing on the international scene in 2009. His previous best season was in 2011 when he finished second in the Japanese F3 National class standings. He has been a race winner in the Super GT since 2017 and finished third in the GT500 class in 2018. Nojiri made his debut in Super Formula in 2014 with Dandelion Racing and has since won 6 races of which 3 are this year.
RACE WINS
The Super Formula series had 4 different race winners this year out of 7 rounds: champion Nojiri took 3 wins, closest rival Nirei Fukuzumi (Dandelion Racing) with 2 wins, Hiroki Ohtsu (Red Bull Mugen Team Goh) 1 win and Giuliano Alesi also 1 win. Alesi won the shortened fog/rain affected race at Autopolis that lasted 23 minutes and 54 seconds. The best performing engine this year was the Honda, 6 wins out of the 7 races as Alesi’s Team TOM’s car was powered by a Toyota.
POLE POSITIONS
Most pole positions of the season also goes to Tomoki Nojiri, Nojiri started twice from pole (Fuji & Motegi race 1) and Nojiri was the only driver who scored more than 1 pole postion this season. The other five drivers are: Giuliano Alesi, Nirei Fukuzumi, Nobuharu Matsushita (B-MAX Racing Team), Hiroki Ohtsu and Yuki Sekiguchi (Carenex Team Impul).
PODIUMS
Nojiri is also the winner of the most podiums of the season (4 times), from the 25 drivers that participated at a round this season 11 different drivers finished on the podium. Only 7 of those 11 drivers have finished more then once on the three top steps: Nirei Fukuzumi (3 times) and 2 times for Toshiki Oyu (TCS Nakajima Racing), Yuhi Sekiguchi (2x), Nobuharu Matsushita, Sena Sakaguchi (P.mu/cerumo-INGING) and Ryo Hirakawa (Carenex Team Impul). Nojiri’s total podiums in Super Formula is 11; an amount that ranks him as 19th in the all time podium finishers list. All time leader of that list is André Lotterer with 56 who raced in Super Formula from 2003 untill 2017.
FASTEST LAP
If there was any doubt that Nojiri wasn’t the top of the field this year, the fastest lap stat should end that doubt. Out of the 7 races he set the fastest lap of the race 3 times followed by 2 for Oyu and the others were for Ohtsu and Sekiguchi.
TEAMS CHAMPIONSHIP
The battle for the drivers championship wasn’t perhaps the most exciting throughout the season but the Teams championship certainly was. Carenex Team Impul won the title with 1 point over DoCoMo Team Dandelion racing. While the team of champion Nojiri, Team Mugen finished third in the standings. It was back in 2010 that Team Impul last won the title while it’s their 8th title since the introduction of a Teams Championship in 1998.
EXTRA
Championship Leaders – 1 – Tomoki Nojiri
Most Laps Led: Tomoki Nojiri – 83 Laps
Most Front Row starts: Tomoki Nojiri – 3
