Fuji Super Formula: Nojiri denies Hirakawa double win

Mugen driver Nojiri came out top in a tense late duel with Saturday race winner Ryo Hirakawa (Impul) to take the chequered flag by a margin of 1.6 seconds for his seventh career win, giving himself the championship lead by two points over Hirakawa.

Ritomo Miyata scored his first podium for TOM'S in third place, less than a second behind Hirakawa.

While Nojiri made a clean getaway from pole to maintain the lead early on ahead of fellow front-row starter Miyata, his Mugen teammate and third-place starter Ukyo Sasahara was left stranded on the grid for the second time in two days. 

An early safety car period was called when Nobuharu Matsushita pitched Tadasuke Makino into a spin at Turn 10 on the opening lap, an incident that put Dandelion driver Makino out of the race.

Nojiri maintained the advantage over Miyata when the race resumed on lap 5 of 41, with Kenta Yamashita running third ahead of Kamui Kobayashi, Sacha Fenestraz and Hirakawa.

Fenestraz dropped to the rear of the pack with a spin, briefly promoting Hirakawa to fifth before he lost a spot to star Team Goh rookie Atsushi Miyake.

Kobayashi was first of the frontrunners to pit when the window opened on lap 10, with Hirakawa settling into fourth place after he had succeeded in repassing and dropping Miyake.

Yamashita was next in the pits of the lead group on lap 19, followed by Miyake on lap 20, giving Hirakawa some crucial time in clear air before he made his stop on lap 22.

That allowed the Impul driver to undercut Miyata, who brought his TOM'S car in the pits on lap 24, with Nojiri following suit one lap later.

However, there was nothing Hirakawa could do about Nojiri in the closing stages, with the gap between the lead pair remaining mostly static at around 1.5s, and Miyata staying close to Hirakawa but never enough so to attempt an overtake - with the top three finishing in that order.

Yamashita brought home his Kondo Racing car in fourth ahead of Miyake, while Yuhi Sekiguchi made a late-stopping strategy to work to finish sixth in the second Impul machine, up 10 places from his grid position.

Hiroki Otsu (Dandelion) and Giuliano Alesi (TOM'S) were seventh and eighth, having both been among the early stoppers, while Kobayashi (KCMG) spent the latter half of the race engaged in a pulsating duel with a recovering Sasahara, finally hanging on for ninth ahead of the Mugen driver.

As in the first race, Red Bull junior Ren Sato (Goh) made a poor getaway from fourth on the grid, dropping to the lower reaches of the top 10.

He finally finished 12th after a slow early pitstop and being passed late on by both Toshiki Oyu (Nakajima Racing) and Sho Tsuboi (Inging).

Fuji Super Formula - Race 2 results:

Cla	#	Driver	Team	Laps	Gap
1	1	Tomoki Nojiri	Team Mugen	41
2	20	Ryo Hirakawa	Team Impul	41	1.659
3	37	Ritomo Miyata	Kuo VANTELIN TEAM TOM’S	41	2.494
4	3	Kenta Yamashita	Kondo Racing	41	15.042
5	55	Atsushi Miyake	Team Goh	41	15.839
6	19	Yuhi Sekiguchi	Team Impul	41	18.206
7	6	Hiroki Otsu	Dandelion Racing	41	31.087
8	36	Giuliano Alesi	Kuo VANTELIN TEAM TOM’S	41	35.048
9	7	Kamui Kobayashi	KCMG	41	35.940
10	15	Ukyo Sasahara	Team Mugen	41	36.338
11	65	Toshiki Oyu	TCS Nakajima Racing	41	37.914
12	38	Sho Tsuboi	P.MU/CERUMO･INGING	41	39.702
13	53	Ren Sato	Team Goh	41	40.658
14	64	Naoki Yamamoto	TCS Nakajima Racing	41	41.518
15	18	Yuji Kunimoto	KCMG	41	43.342
16	12	Nirei Fukuzumi	ThreeBond Drago CORSE	41	51.471
17	39	Sena Sakaguchi	P.MU/CERUMO･INGING	41	52.643
18	14	Kazuya Oshima	docomo business ROOKIE	41	58.096
19	50	Nobuharu Matsushita	B-Max Racing Team	41	1'19.086
20	4	Sacha Fenestraz	Kondo Racing	40	1 Lap
21	5	Tadasuke Makino	Dandelion Racing	0
View full results