Photo Gallery: Suzuka 60th Anniversary Fan Thanks Day and Super Formula pre-season test

Suzuka Circuit saw four days of pure motorsport thunder with the 60th Anniversary Fan Thanks Day followed by two days of official Super Formula pre-season testing.

Photo by Y. Sezaki

For the first time in three years, Suzuka Circuit was able to hold its traditional Fan Thanks Day last weekend. This time, it was to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the legendary track. A total of 17,000 fans, including 10,000 on Sunday alone, made the pilgrimage to the Mie Prefecture. They were greeted with two eventful days of celebration that were jointly held by Honda, Toyota and circuit owner Mobilityland. Part of the celebrations were of course a fantastic exhibition of classic and modern race cars from various championships and eras. Some of them like the legendary Ferrari 248 F1 with which Michael Schumacher took part in his final Formula 1 season for Ferrari as well as Nigel Mansell’s Williams FW12 from 1989 also hit the track and enchanted the fans with their roaring engines.

Among the highlights were two Super GT demo races on the shorter East Course, where 14 GT500 cars gathered for an exceptional show. Despite it only being an exhibition, the drivers treated it like a small competition, 3-wide battles on the main straight including. The first race on Saturday was won by Nobuharu Matsushita in the Astemo NSX-GT ahead of Kazuki Hiramine in the Calsonic Impul Z – Nissan’s new weapon for the 2022 season. What made this battle even more exciting was the fact that Matsushita used to drive for Impul last season before switching back to the Honda camp earlier this year. The demo race on Sunday saw an incredible photo finish between Sacha Fenestraz (KeePer TOM’s GR Supra) and Ukyo Sasahara (Red Bull Mugen NSX-GT). The latter made his way through the field and caught up with Fenestraz on the final lap. Both came out of the final corner side by side and crossed the finish line in parallel. It looked like Fenestraz‘ Supra was slightly ahead of Otsu’s NSX-GT. But since there was no timekeeping, it would only fair to declare it a tie. Either way: The GT500 drivers already gave the fans a taste of what’s to expect, when the series will hold two championship rounds at Suzuka Circuit in May and late August, with the latter being a 450km round.

The 60th anniversary also saw another iteration of the Eternal Showdown, not just between the two giants of the sport, Satoru Nakajima and Kazuyshi Hoshino, but for the first time between Satoshi Motoyama, Juichi Wakisaka and Ryo Michigami as well, dubebd „New Rival Showdown“. The first leg of the battle saw the legends duke it out in a Honda N-ONE on the East Course. Hoshino took the checkers ahead of Nakjima after the latter temporarily gained the lead on the second lap. In the „New Rival Showdown“, „the Emperor“ Motoyama finished ahead of Wakisaka and Michigami. The final confrontation was set for Sunday and the starting order was based on Saturday’s results. The Toyota GR86 was used for the final race and it saw Satoru Nakajima defending his title after taking the lead from Kazuyoshi Hoshino on the very first lap. At the end, he raised his championship belt with a big smile into the air. Ahead of the two legends was the group of the „New Rival Showdown“. Motoyama had a bad start, causing the three cars to go side by side into the first corner. Wakisaka, who has experience competing in the BRZ / 86 Cup, gained the lead and didn’t give it away until the end, thus winning the championship belt.

Photo by Y. Sezaki

Super Formula also had an exciting competition prepared. To put the focus on the skill of the drivers, the „1 Lap Attack“ time trial exhibition was held. Rookie Ren Sato (Team Goh) surprised many by setting the fastest time in qualifying. However, on his actual attack lap, he had a spin, thus ending the competition with no time set. This was only the second time Sato was driving the SF19 after December’s rookie test. The competition was split into two parts to give room for other events in-between. Despite the slightly worse conditions, Ritomo Miyata (TOM’s) was the only driver to set a sub 1:38 lap and took victory of the first ever „1 Lap Attack“ competition with a 1:37.939, beating Naoki Yamamoto’s (Nakajima Racing) fastest time from the morning. He was followed by defending champion Tomoki Nojiri (Team Mugen) and Nirei Fukzumi (ThreeBond Drago CORSE).

Official Super Formula pre-season test: A clean sweep by Sho Tsuboi

Photo by Y. Sezaki

While the weekend was all fun and games, the real work started on Monday for the 21 Super Formula drivers. That’s one more than originally announced, as Team Mugen did a last-minute nomination ahead of the weekend by announcing Ukyo Sasahara as their second driver. Originally, the team scaled down to just one car after Team Goh announced to enter the season as an independent teams after working together with last year’s championship-winning team. This will be Sasahara’s second full-time season after replacing Jüri Vips at Mugen in 2020 due to Japan’s travel ban caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021 he filled in for the ill Tadasuke Makino at Dandelion Racing and showed two stellar performances, taking a P5 finish at Fuji as well as finishing on the podium at Suzuka. However, despite his good results, he couldn’t get a full-time cockpit until now. The last-minute deal was made thanks to the efforts of Team Mugen as well as his sponsor Bingo (BH Auction) as well as the passion of the fans, who voiced their wishes of him getting a cockpit quite eagerly since last year.

Photo by Y. Sezaki

Man of the test was Sho Tsuboi (Cerumo-Inging), who performed a clean sweep by setting the overall best time in the morning session on both days. His 1:35.740 on Monday morning was good enough to be the overall quickest time of the day as Tuesday saw slightly higher temperatures. In general, all lap times were much quicker than at last year’s JAF Grand Prix season finale as well as the rookie test in December, which is likely due to the colder temperatures as well as the overall condition of the track after the previous two Suzuka 60th Anniversary Fan Thanks Day days. Tsuboi was the only driver to take two victories in 2020, but suffered a difficult season last year, only finishing 15th in the standings, which left him baffled. Thus, he and the team went back to the basics, Tsuboi told Japanese publication auto sport Web. After winning the Super GT GT500 title last year, he started believing in himself again, he said, which gave him a confidence boost. Tsuboi’s quickest time beat defending champion Tomoki Nojiri (1:35.530) by 0.060 seconds, who finished the test ahead of Hiroki Otsu (1:35.653) and Kondo Racing’s Sacha Fenestraz (1:35.707), who was only able to compete in two rounds last year due to Japan’s strict travel ban. Despite missing on so much seat time, Fenestraz seemed as quick as ever. This year, he’ll get help from NISMO ambassador Michael Krumm, who used to drive for Kondo Racing in Super GT from 2013 until 2015. Krumm, fluent in Japanese, will act as a bridge between the Franco-Argentine pilot, especially during the race, as Fenestraz can now speak freely. Outside of the car, the communication happened only in broken Japanese, Fenestraz told Motorsport.com. Reigning Super GT champion Yuhi Sekiguchi (1:35.819) completed the top 5. Quickest in the afternoon session of the first day was Naoki Yamamoto (1:36.090) while Ritomo Miyata (136.466) went quickest on the final day.

Part of the test was Yokohama’s new rear tyre specification. Yokohama engineer Noritaka Koguchi explained that since the beginning of last year, they’ve been working on improving the durability of their rear Advan tyres following a number of punctures in the most recent seasons, most noteably Yuji Kunimoto’s high-speed crash in the fast 130R corner last year. The teams already had a chance to test one set each at last year’s rookie test in December. Koguchi explained that the changes were made to improve the durability and increase safety. The outer shape has changed slightly, but it’s only noticeably if put next to last year’s tyres. In order to change the durability, changes were made to the profile and the pressure when cornering got reduced. According to Koguchi, about 60-70% of the drivers didn’t feel any difference when asked about a changed grip level. Among the drivers who noticed a difference were both Kondo Racing pilots Kenta Yamashita and Sacha Fenestraz.

Photo by Y. Sezaki

On Saturday, the Japan Race Promotion (JRP) confirmed their plans to use two test cars by Toyota and Honda as part of their SF NEXT 50 project in pursuit of developing carbon-neutral fuels and environmentally-friendly bodywork. Borth cars are inofficially dubbed Aka Tora (Red Tiger) and Shiro Tora (White Tiger) as both feature a different tiger pattern color. Extensive testing will take place before or after each Super Formula round this year. Two-time Super Formula champion Hiroaki Ishiura (Toyota) and series veteran Koudai Tsukakoshi (Honda) got nominated as the development drivers. In their pursuit for carbon neutrality, the JRP will be using the biocomposite material hemp by Swiss-based composites manufacturer Bcomp instead of carbon fiber for bodywork. According to the JRP, hemp is comparatively as light as carbon fibre and reduces the CO2 emission by 75%.

Super Formula will hold one more official pre-season test at Fuji Speedway on March 22-23 ahead of the start of the 2022 season with a double header at the same venue on April 9-10.

Friend of the show Y. Sezaki was at Suzuka and provided us with some fantastic impressions of both the 60th Anniversary Thanks Day as well as the Super Formula test, featuring all of the new liveries.

Photos Suzuka 60th Anniversary Fan Thanks Day