Sekiguchi tops first Super Formula test day

Sekiguchi, who was second fastest in the morning, led much of the afternoon session with a time of 1m36.291s before a slew of late improvements dropped him down to fourth.

The Impul driver then went nearly half a second quicker on his final flyer, ending the day on top with a 1m35.717s lap.

Sometime F1 driver and two-time Super Formula champion Kazuki Nakajima finished just 0.076s behind in second, while his TOM'S teammate Andre Lotterer - fresh from his Formula E debut in Hong Kong - was another three tenths adrift in third.

GP3 and Formula V8 3.5 race winner Alex Palou was classified as the top rookie in fourth, his time being just 0.017s slower than Lotterer.

Dandelion’s Tomoki Nojiri and 2013 champion Naoki Yamamoto were separated by just 0.051s in fifth and sixth respectively, while Yuji Kunimoto was marginally behind in seventh.

Real Racing’s Koudai Tsukakoshi was next up in eighth, while Honda protege Nirei Fukuzumi finished ninth in his first ever SF outing.

Daisuke Nakajima was fastest in the morning, but ended up 10th in the combined timesheets after handing over the #64 car to Palou.

GP2 race winner Nobuharu Matsushita, who is set to make a full-time transition to Super Formula, was classified 13th with a time that was just over a second slower than pacesetter Sekiguchi.

The 24-year-old triggered one of the several red flags of the day, his Dandelion Racing car stopping on the start/finish straight with 30 minutes left in the day.

Another SF debutant to cause a red flag was Rio Haryanto, the Indonesian heavily damaging the Honda test car with a crash in the morning.

He propped up the timesheets in 22nd position, having had to hand over the car to Hiroki Otsu after lunch.

Pos	Driver	Team / Engine	Morning	Afternoon
1	Yuhi Sekiguchi	Impul-Toyota	1'36.607	1'35.717
2	Kazuki Nakajima	TOM'S-Toyota	1'36.989	1'35.794
3	Andre Lotterer	TOM'S-Toyota	1'36.855	1'36.015
4	Alex Palou	Nakajima-Honda	-	1'36.037
5	Tomoki Nojiri	Dandelion-Honda	1'36.780	1'36.204
6	Naoki Yamamoto	Mugen-Honda	1'36.805	1'36.255
7	Yuji Kunimoto	Inging-Toyota	1'36.994	1'36.259
8	Koudai Tsukakoshi	Real-Honda	1'37.248	1'36.524
9	Nirei Fukuzumi	Mugen-Honda	1'37.206	1'36.536
10	Daisuke Nakajima	Nakajima-Honda	1'36.573	-
11	Hiroaki Ishiura	Inging-Toyota	1'37.818	1'36.693
12	Kamui Kobayashi	KCMG-Toyota	1'40.468	1'36.765
13	Kenta Yamashita	Kondo-Toyota	1'38.232	1'36.892
14	Nobuharu Matsushita	Dandelion-Honda	1'37.548	1'36.968
15	Maximilian Gunther	LeMans-Toyota	1'37.725	1'37.170
16	Narain Karthikeyan	Nakajima-Honda	1'37.734	1'37.176
17	Jann Mardenborough	Impul-Toyota	1'37.946	1'37.198
18	Nick Cassidy	Kondo-Toyota	1'38.066	1'37.466
19	Mitsunori Takaboshi	B-Max-Honda	1.39.408	1'38.364
20	Ralph Boschung	LeMans-Toyota	1'39.366	1'38.486
21	Hiroki Ohtsu	Honda test car	-	1'38.799
22	Rio Haryanto	Honda test car	1'43.062	-