Race report

Super Formula Autopolis

Autopolis Super Formula: Hirakawa scores brilliant win from eighth

Impul Toyota driver Ryo Hirakawa charged from eighth on the grid to score his second victory of the 2022 Super Formula season at Autopolis, slashing his points deficit to Tomoki Nojiri.

Rachit Thukral

Edited: May 22, 2022, 12:10 PM

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Hirakawa made a brilliant launch from the fourth row on the opening lap to slot himself in third behind polesitter Nojiri and Tadasuke Makino, aided by Ritomo Miyata making a poor getaway from second and nudging a fast-starting Ukyo Sasahara over the grass on the run down to Turn 1.

The safety car was deployed immediately afterwards to recover the stricken Nakajima Racing car of Toshiki Oyu, who crashed into the barriers at the exit of Turn 3 in a desperate attempt to move up the pack after an engine change left him last on the grid.

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When the safety car retreated into the pits at the end of lap 3, Nojiri was able to pull away from the rest of the field but Makino was struggling to hold on to second position.

At the start of lap 5, Makino covered the inside line into Turn 1, but Hirakawa was able to pull off a brilliant move around the outside of the Dandelion Honda driver to snatch second position.

Before Hirakawa could set about chasing Nojiri for the lead, the safety car returned as Kamui Kobayashi's KCMG machine was left stranded on track at the exit of Turn 3 following a collision with Sho Tsuboi.

The race didn’t resume until the start of lap 10, with Nojiri leading the way from Hirakawa as a struggling Makino pitted at the end of that lap to fit a fresh set of tyres.

Nojiri was the next of the frontrunners to pit on lap 16, with Hirakawa staying out in a bid to overcut his chief title rival.

This was where the race shifted in Hirakawa’s favour, with the Toyota Hypercar driver setting a series of fastest laps as Nojiri struggled for performance even with fresh tyres on his Mugen car.

When Hirakawa finally dived into the pits at the end of lap 20, he was able to emerge from the pits comfortably in the net lead, even as his stop was fractionally slower at 8.5s.

With Nojiri having no pace to mount a fightback, Hirakawa was able to cruise to the chequered flag, scoring his fourth career victory with a comfortable margin of 2.3s.

So poor was Nojiri’s pace in the second stint that he was overcut by both Kondo Racing’s Sacha Fenestraz and Team Goh rookie Atsushi Miyake, dropping outside the podium positions in fourth.

Both Fenestraz and Miyake were able to nurse their tyres for long in the first stint and pit in the final 15 laps, with the latter making the most of the strategy to score his and Goh’s first podium in only their fourth start in the series.

Nojiri’s result has left him with a reduced lead of seven points over Hirakawa, as the two again cemented their position as chief title contenders.

TOM'S driver Miyata was able to get a jump on Makino in the pits and kept the pressure up on a struggling Nojiri in the second stint, but was unable to make a move and had to settle for fifth.

Makino ended up sixth ahead of the second Mugen car of Sasahara, who likewise stopped on lap 10.

Completing the top 10 were Inging's Sena Sakaguchi, the Dandelion car of Hiroki Otsu and Suzuka race winner Nobuharu Matsushita, who was able to haul his B-Max machine to the final points-paying position from 19th on the grid.

Nirei Fukuzumi finished 12th but was disqualified post-race for not performing his tyre change within the mandatory window, which begins on lap 10 and runs until the penultimate lap. The Drago Corse driver came into change tyres at the end of lap 9, but this did not count.

Autopolis Super Formula - Race results:

Cla # Driver Team Laps Gap 1 20 Japan Ryo Hirakawa
Team Impul 42 2 4 France Sacha Fenestraz
Kondo Racing 42 2.310 3 55 Japan Atsushi Miyake
Team Goh 42 12.508 4 1 Japan Tomoki Nojiri
Team Mugen 42 21.821 5 37 Japan Ritomo Miyata
Kuo VANTELIN TEAM TOM’S 42 22.391 6 5 Japan Tadasuke Makino
Japan Dandelion Racing 42 32.569 7 15 Japan Ukyo Sasahara
Team Mugen 42 33.571 8 39 Japan Sena Sakaguchi
P.MU/CERUMO･INGING 42 34.647 9 6 Japan Hiroki Otsu
Japan Dandelion Racing 42 35.577 10 50 Japan Nobuharu Matsushita
B-Max Racing Team 42 36.410 11 18 Japan Yuji Kunimoto
KCMG 42 39.718 12 3 Japan Kenta Yamashita
Kondo Racing 42 46.360 13 12 Japan Nirei Fukuzumi
ThreeBond Drago CORSE 42 53.946 14 38 Japan Sho Tsuboi
P.MU/CERUMO･INGING 42 58.931 15 64 Japan Naoki Yamamoto
TCS Nakajima Racing 41 1 Lap 16 14 Japan Kazuya Oshima
docomo business ROOKIE 41 1 Lap 17 19 Japan Yuhi Sekiguchi
Team Impul 41 1 Lap 18 53 Japan Ren Sato
Team Goh 40 2 Laps 19 36 France Giuliano Alesi
Kuo VANTELIN TEAM TOM’S 36 6 Laps 20 7 Japan Kamui Kobayashi
KCMG 4 38 Laps 21 65 Japan Toshiki Oyu
TCS Nakajima Racing 0 View full results

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