Yamamoto tops first day of Fuji test after switching teams

Just two days on from winning his third title for Dandelion Racing, it was revealed that Yamamoto would be moving across to fellow Honda outfit Nakajima - which which he made his series debut back in 2010 - for the two-day test.

He proceeded to top the times in the closing stages of the first two-hour session with an effort of 1m20.338s, which left him 0.163s clear of sole Mugen driver Tomoki Nojiri.

Yamamoto's benchmark was not headed during the afternoon session, which was topped by his full-season teammate Nirei Fukuzumi, Dandelion's only driver for the test.

Fukuzumi left until the final few minutes of the day to post his best time of 1m20.487s, leaving him second overall ahead of Nojiri.

Toshiki Oyu came close to making it a clean sweep for Nakajima but was demoted to second, and fourth overall, by Fukuzumi's late effort.

Sho Tsuboi was best of the Toyota-powered drivers with the fourth-quickest time of the afternoon and the fifth-quickest overall, closely followed by Super Formula Lights champion Ritomo Miyata - who is replacing Nick Cassidy at TOM'S for the test.

Tatiana Calderon was at one stage second-quickest in the afternoon behind Fukuzumi, but ended up a creditable seventh overall for the one-car Drago Corse team.

Completing the top 10 were Ryo Hirakawa, Impul's only runner for the test, Kazuki Nakajima (TOM'S) and Inging newcomer Sena Sakaguchi, who replaces Hiroaki Ishiura.

Enaam Ahmed（Buzz Racing with B-Max）

Photo by: Tomohiro Yoshita

Of the other rookies, Enaam Ahmed was 16th-fastest for B-Max Racing with Motopark, a little under two seconds off the pace, ahead of Shunsuke Kohno, who shared Inging's 'Rookie Racing'-branded third car with regular driver Kazuya Oshima.

Bringing up the rear were two gentleman drivers, Nobuhiro Imada and B-Max owner 'Dragon', or Ryuji Kumita, who shared the squad's second entry over the course of the day.

Testing continues with two more two-hour sessions on Wednesday.

Fuji testing times:

Pos.	Driver	Team/Engine	Morning	Afternoon
1	Naoki Yamamoto	Nakajima/Honda	1m20.338s	1m20.954s
2	Nirei Fukuzumi	Dandelion/Honda	1m20.706s	1m20.487s
3	Tomoki Nojiri	Mugen/Honda	1m20.501s	1m20.802s
4	Toshiki Oyu	Nakajima/Honda	1m20.962s	1m20.648s
5	Sho Tsuboi	Inging/Toyota	1m20.973s	1m20.838s
6	Ritomo Miyata	TOM'S/Toyota	1m21.853s	1m20.850s
7	Tatiana Calderon	Drago Corse/Honda	1m21.588s	1m20.935s
8	Ryo Hirakawa	Impul/Toyota	1m21.404s	1m21.252s
9	Kazuki Nakajima	TOM'S/Toyota	1m21.380s	1m21.433s
10	Sena Sakaguchi	Inging/Toyota	1m21.393s	1m21.441s
11	Kazuya Oshima	Inging/Toyota	no time	1m21.434s
12	Sacha Fenestraz	Kondo/Toyota	1m22.013s	1m21.520s
13	Yuji Kunimoto	KCMG/Toyota	1m22.108s	1m21.560s
14	Kenta Yamashita	Kondo/Toyota	1m21.588s	1m21.592s
15	Kamui Kobayashi	KCMG/Toyota	1m22.704s	1m22.010s
16	Enaam Ahmed	B-Max/Honda	1m23.389s	1m22.186s
17	Shunsuke Kohno	Inging/Toyota	1m23.003s	no time
18	Nobuhiro Imada	B-Max/Honda	1m24.571s	no time
19	'Dragon'	B-Max/Honda	no time	1m25.580s