Super Formula Fuji
HPD scholarship winner Hyman explains Fuji stall woes
Super Formula rookie Raoul Hyman says the problems that caused him to stall at the start of both last weekend's Fuji races were similar to the issues faced by Ukyo Sasahara a year prior.
Jamie Klein
Edited: Apr 13, 2023, 8:47 AM
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HPD scholarship winner Hyman made his debut in the Japanese series with the B-Max Racing team, finishing 16th and 18th in the first two rounds of the nine-round campaign.
However, on both occasions he failed to get away from the grid, and was one of four drivers to suffer that fate in the opening race.
In the second race, Hyman again was unable to get away, despite the counter-measures taken to prevent a repeat of the problem.
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"We were given an altered start procedure to ensure we wouldn’t stall again," said Hyman. "We followed that to a tee and the car stalled again, same as yesterday.
"It’s more of an issue with the clutch itself [and not the mapping]. One of the Honda guys was telling me just now that it looks similar to the problem Ukyo [Sasahara] had last year here, and it wasn’t his fault either.
"It’s a shame that I haven’t been able to go into the first corner in anger, with cars around me, but it was something outside of our control.
"I even just used more throttle [than ideal] just to give it more revs to get it to go, to avoid just dropping the revs, and it still stalled. It was the same sensation as yesterday, despite the changes we made."
Hyman was one of four drivers to be left at the start line on Saturday's race
Hyman revealed that in the opening race, after rejoining a lap down, his performance was compromised by a loose bolt on the front roll bar that obstructed the steering column - not only making the car hard to drive, but also rendering the data gained much less useful.
Without such issues on Sunday he enjoyed stronger race pace, but still feels there is a long way to go to improve his B-Max machine's performance.
"Today was more representative, the car felt much more normal," he said. "But there are still a lot of procedural issues affected us, and that’s really having a negative impact on performance.
"It genuinely felt like we never really got going on car setup all weekend. It’s not just car balance that’s the issue, because we need to make a huge jump."
Hyman now heads to the next weekend's third round of the season at Suzuka, where he has the benefit of having driven in pre-season testing.
On his expectations for that race, Hyman said: "We need to figure out how to overcome the procedural issues we have now and how to approach the weekend as a team.
"Going back to a track I know is positive, but there’s a lot of work to do to be competitive."
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