Hirakawa heads de Oliveira, Gasly on final Fuji test day

Poor weather continued to plague the second pre-season Super Formula test, with the organisers having to cancel the morning session, leaving drivers with just three hours of running in the afternoon.

When the action finally began, Hirakawa led home a one-two finish for Team TOM’S, edging out Joao Paulo de Oliveira by two tenths of a second with a time of 1m21.628s.

The two drivers are subbing for Andre Lotterer and Kamui Kobayashi, who are taking part in the WEC Prologue test in Monza with Porsche and Toyota respectively.

Meanwhile, Red Bull junior Pierre Gasly was third fastest in the session, and again the best of the Honda-powered drivers, three tenths off the pace of Rossiter.

Jann Mardenborough was next up in fourth, having briefly held the top spot in the session.

2013 Super Formula champion Naoki Yamamoto was fifth-fastest with a time of 1m22.073s, while Hiroaki Ishiura had to be content with sixth place after leading nearly half the session.

KCMG’s Yuichi Nakayama was seventh ahead of Dandelion driver Takuya Izawa, with Narain Karthikeyan and Koudai Tsukakoshi completing the top 10.

Despite the low temperatures compromising the grip levels, Tomoki Nojiri caused the only notable disruption to the session, the Japanese driver stopping at halfway point and bringing out the red flags.

Day 2 Results:

Po.	Driver	Team	Time/Gap	Lap
1	Ryo Hirakawa	TEAM TOM'S	1:21.628	98
2	Joao Paulo de Oliveira	TEAM TOM'S	0.180	91
3	Pierre Gasly	TEAM MUGEN	0.328	91
4	Jann Mardenborough	TEAM IMPUL	0.445	119
5	Naoki Yamamoto	TEAM MUGEN	0.453	116
6	Hiroaki Ishiura	INGING	0.552	90
7	Yuichi Nakayama	KCMG	1.034	103
8	Takuya Izawa	DANDELION RACING	1.065	81
9	Narain Karthikeyan	NAKAJIMA RACING	1.225	94
10	Koudai Tsukakoshi	REAL RACING	1.332	84
11	Yuhi Sekiguchi	TEAM IMPUL	1.336	73
12	Daisuke Nakajima	NAKAJIMA RACING	1.525	104
13	Kazuya Oshima	TEAM LEMANS	1.565	74
14	Tomoki Nojiri	DANDELION RACING	1.649	103
15	Nick Cassidy	KONDO RACING	1.677	90
16	Yuji Tachikawa	INGING	1.704	107
17	Takashi Kogure	B-Max Racing team	1.761	78
18	Kenta Yamashita	KONDO RACING	1.841	109
19	Kohei Hirate	TEAM LEMANS	2.103	81