Fuji Super Formula: Palou leads Newey in practice

It was TOM’S driver Kazuki Nakajima who monopolised the top spot for much of the one-hour session, leading with an early benchmark of 1m23.893s.

He improved marginally to a 1m23.866s after bolting on a set of soft tyres - and that time remained unbeaten until a flurry of late laps in the final 15 minutes of the session.

Reigning Japanese F3 champion Sho Tsuboi was the first driver to depose Nakajima from the top with a time of 1m23.687s.

But with five minutes to go, Palou managed to go even quicker, lapping the ex-Formula 1 venue in 1m23.287s.

That time would ultimately never be toppled, although B-Max by Motopark driver Newey ended up within three tenths to end up second.

Nakajima made a late improvement of his own to finish third ahead of Kondo Racing’s in-form man Kenta Yamashita and the aforementioned Tsuboi, who slipped to fifth in the final order.

Red Bull junior Lucas Auer, who secured his maiden Super Formula at Sugo last month, was classified sixth, half a second down on pacesetter Palou.

Auer was set to go even quicker after setting a personal best in sector one, before aborting the lap and heading straight into the pits to end his session.

Team LeMans’ Kazuya Oshima, fresh off a Super GT win at Buriram, was next up in seventh, with Ryo Hirakawa eighth for Impul.

Tadasuke Makino finished ninth in the second of the Nakajima Racing cars, while Kondo’s Yuji Kunimoto completed the top 10.

Championship front-runners Nick Cassidy and Naoki Yamamoto languished in 13th and 14th respectively, the two separated by just 0.001s.

Red Bull junior Patricio O’Ward completed 27 laps on his Super Formula debut, his best effort of 1m25.535s placing him 20th in the timesheets.

O'Ward trailed Mugen teammate Tomoki Nojiri - who was 15th - by seven tenths.

Practice results:

Cla	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	Alex Palou	TCS Nakajima Racing	1'23.287
2	Harrison Newey	B-MAX with Motopark	1'23.569	0.282
3	Kazuki Nakajima	Vantelin Team TOM'S	1'23.611	0.324
4	Kenta Yamashita	Kondo Racing	1'23.678	0.391
5	Sho Tsuboi	JMS P.mu/cerumo-INGING	1'23.687	0.400
6	Lucas Auer	B-MAX with Motopark	1'23.766	0.479
7	Kazuya Oshima	UOMO Sunoco Team LeMans	1'23.892	0.605
8	Ryo Hirakawa	Team Impul	1'23.966	0.679
9	Tadasuke Makino	TCS Nakajima Racing	1'24.237	0.950
10	Yuji Kunimoto	Kondo Racing	1'24.392	1.105
11	Nirei Fukuzumi	DoCoMo Team Dandelion Racing	1'24.514	1.227
12	Artem Markelov	UOMO Sunoco Team LeMans	1'24.710	1.423
13	Nick Cassidy	Vantelin Team TOM'S	1'24.841	1.554
14	Naoki Yamamoto	DoCoMo Team Dandelion Racing	1'24.842	1.555
15	Tomoki Nojiri	Team Mugen	1'24.869	1.582
16	Kamui Kobayashi	carrozzeria Team KCMG	1'24.890	1.603
17	Koudai Tsukakoshi	Real Racing	1'24.942	1.655
18	Hiroaki Ishiura	JMS P.mu/cerumo-INGING	1'25.195	1.908
19	Yuhi Sekiguchi	Team Impul	1'25.357	2.070
20	Patricio O'Ward	Team Mugen	1'25.535	2.248
View full results