Okayama Super Formula: Ishiura wins red-flagged race, Vandoorne 12th
Team Inging’s Hiroaki Ishiura won the second race of the Super Formula season at Okayama, which was prematurely brought to a halt due to treacherous weather conditions.
Hiroaki Ishiura, Cerumo Inging
Yasushi Ishihara
In stark contrast to Saturday’s sunny qualifying, the race started amid heavy rain showers behind the safety car.
Several drivers were caught out as positions changed every lap, despite the race being neutralised by the aforementioned safety car.
The race was eventually red-flagged on Lap 8, with a decision to not resume taken soon after.
At the start, Inging’s Ishiura held on to his lead from Impul driver Joao Paulo de Oliveira until Lap 5 when the latter parked his car with mechanical troubles.
De Oliveira's retirement promoted the Real Racing duo of Koudai Tsukakoshi and Takuya Izawa into second and third positions.
Behind, Tomoki Nojiri was classified in fourth place ahead of Race 1 winner Naoki Yamamoto and fellow Japanese drivers Yuji Kunimoto and Daisuke Nakajima.
Andre Lotterer and James Rossiter took advantage of the mess to finish in eighth and ninth, the former picking up the last point.
Meanwhile, McLaren F1 reserve Stoffel Vandoorne pitted under the safety car on Lap 3 for a quick dash of fuel, dropping to last position as a result.
However, by the time the race was suspended on Lap 8, the Belgian driver had moved up to 12th position.
Kamui Kobayashi was hit by electrical issues, forcing the former F1 driver to make as many as three pitstops - one involving a steering wheel change - en route to a lowly 18th place finish.
Ahead of Kobayashi was his Toyota WEC teammate Kazuki Nakajima in 17th while Indian Narain Karthikeyan finished 16th.
As per the regulations, with the lead driver completing two laps but less than 75 percent of the race distance, only half points were awarded to the top eight drivers.
Race results:
Pos | Driver | Team | Gap |
---|---|---|---|
1 |
Hiroaki Ishiura
|
INGING
|
- |
2 |
Koudai Tsukakoshi
|
REAL RACING
|
0.718 |
3 |
Takuya Izawa
|
REAL RACING
|
1.749 |
4 |
Tomoki Nojiri
|
DANDELION RACING
|
2.525 |
5 |
Naoki Yamamoto
|
TEAMMUGEN
|
3.841 |
6 |
Yuji Kunimoto
|
INGING
|
5.408 |
7 |
Daisuke Nakajima
|
NAKAJIMA RACING
|
6.442 |
8 |
Andre Lotterer
|
TEAM TOM’S
|
8.369 |
9 |
James Rossiter
|
KONDO RACING
|
9.677 |
10 |
Yuichi Nakayama
|
KCMG
|
10.753 |
11 |
William Buller
|
KONDO RACING
|
12.188 |
12 |
Stoffel Vandoorne
|
DANDELION RACING
|
14.133 |
13 |
Yuhi Sekiguchi
|
TEAM IMPUL
|
17.088 |
14 |
Bertrand Baguette
|
NAKAJIMA RACING
|
17.676 |
15 |
Takashi Kogure
|
DRAGO CORSE
|
19.565 |
16 |
Narain Karthikeyan
|
TEAM LEMANS
|
20.596 |
17 |
Kazuki Nakajima
|
VANTELIN TEAM TOM’S
|
21.431 |
18 |
Kamui Kobayashi
|
TEAM LEMANS
|
25.388 |
Ret |
Joao Paulo de Oliveira
|
TEAM IMPUL
|
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