Fuji Super Formula: Nojiri grabs pole for second race

Nojiri, who finished second behind Ryo Hirakawa in Saturday's opening race, left it until the very end of the session to post the fastest time of the seven-minute Q2 pole shootout of 1m21.522s.

That was enough to beat TOM'S man Ritomo Miyata by 0.195s and secure the eighth pole of his Super Formula career.

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Saturday poleman Ukyo Sasahara briefly went fastest with a 1m21.731s, which stood as the time to beat until it was eclipsed by both Miyata and Mugen teammate Nojiri, leaving him third on the grid.

Sasahara is joined on the second row by Team Goh rookie Ren Sato, who lined up alongside Sasahara on Saturday.

Kondo Racing pair Kenta Yamashita and Q1 pacesetter Sacha Fenestraz were fifth- and seventh-fastest, split by Kamui Kobayashi (KCMG), who qualified 14 places better than he managed on Saturday to go sixth.

Early points leader Hirakawa could only manage eighth-fastest in his Impul machine ahead of rookie Atsushi Miyake (Goh), who set two times good enough to top his Q1 group but lost the quicker of these owing to a track limits violation.

Giuliano Alesi completed the top 10 in the second of the TOM'S machines.

Yuhi Sekiguchi (Impul), fourth on Saturday, was the biggest surprise Q1 dropout and will start Sunday's race from way down in 16th, one place ahead of three-time champion Naoki Yamamoto (Nakajima Racing).

Nobuharu Matsushita (B-Max) had his fastest lap deleted in Q1 for track limits and will start from 21st and last.

Sunday's race begins at 2.30pm local time (GMT +9).

Fuji Super Formula - Q2 results:

Cla	#	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	1	Tomoki Nojiri	Team Mugen	1'21.522
2	37	Ritomo Miyata	Kuo VANTELIN TEAM TOM’S	1'21.717	0.195
3	15	Ukyo Sasahara	Team Mugen	1'21.731	0.209
4	53	Ren Sato	Team Goh	1'21.754	0.232
5	3	Kenta Yamashita	Kondo Racing	1'21.763	0.241
6	7	Kamui Kobayashi	KCMG	1'21.842	0.320
7	4	Sacha Fenestraz	Kondo Racing	1'21.857	0.335
8	20	Ryo Hirakawa	Team Impul	1'21.882	0.360
9	55	Atsushi Miyake	Team Goh	1'21.934	0.412
10	36	Giuliano Alesi	Kuo VANTELIN TEAM TOM’S	1'21.948	0.426
11	38	Sho Tsuboi	P.MU/CERUMO･INGING	1'22.178	0.656
12	6	Hiroki Otsu	Dandelion Racing	1'22.249	0.727
View full results