Super Formula: What happened the last time a new car debuted

The introduction of the Dallara SF19, upon which the new SF23 is based, heralded a major shake-up in the competitive order. The top three teams from the previous year - Kondo Racing, Mugen and Inging - all struggled, the first two-named not helped by the loss of their respective star drivers Nick Cassidy and Naoki Yamamoto.

While TOM’S was boosted by the arrival of Cassidy and Dandelion Racing likewise by Yamamoto, there was another team that shot up the rankings - Nakajima Racing, which found itself back in the winners’ circle after a painful nine-year drought.

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For context, Satoru Nakajima’s eponymous outfit was one of Super Formula’s powerhouse teams in the late 1990s and all through the 2000s, taking Tom Coronel, Tora Takagi, Ralph Firman and Loic Duval to title glory. But 2011 marked the team’s first winless season since 2003 and the start of a slump that persisted all the way through the SF14 era.

In 2018, drivers Takuya Izawa and Narain Karthikeyan mustered just eight points between them - courtesy of a fifth place each - leaving Nakajima eighth in the teams’ ranking.

Nakajima was struggling towards the back of the field in the final year of the SF14 era

The following year however, the arrival of two talented youngsters in the form of Alex Palou and Tadasuke Makino, combined with the reset provided by the SF19, allowed the team to come within a whisker of its first title since Duval’s triumph a full decade earlier.

Changing drivers of course played a role in the turnaround, and subsequent history has proven in particular how good Palou is. But according to now-Mugen engineer Tomo Koike, who was working as a data engineer for Nakajima at the time, the role of veteran engineer Jun Okada, a mainstay of the Nakajima stable, and Izawa are not to be overlooked.

“I remember we had a good test with the new SF19 at Motegi in 2018 [in late August] with Okada-san’s set-up, which was crucial,” Koike says. “He has been working in Super Formula for more than 20 years, and his experience was very helpful.

“He came up with the initial set-ups in the Motegi test, and it was Izawa who was driving, which was also important. Izawa's ability to set up a car is amazing, like [Tomoki] Nojiri.”

Izawa during the SF19 development test at Motegi

Photo by: JRP

Such was Izawa’s contribution, according to Koike, he could have been in a position to fight for wins too in 2019 had he been able to stay with the team for a second year.

“The disappointing thing is that he joined in 2018 and only drove for that season, so he wasn’t able to get any good results,” adds Koike. “But if he had driven in 2019, he would have had much better results, like Alex.”

Asked to give a rough estimation of how much of the team’s progress can be credited to the arrival of Palou and Makino, Koike replies: “I would say it was 50 percent the drivers. If Alex drove for another team, maybe his contribution would have been 70 percent.

“Of course he is a fantastic driver, but he was also good when it came to working on the set-up. Some set-up concepts that we didn’t understand properly, he had used in Europe. Having that information from outside of Japan was also useful for setting up the SF19.”

Palou's speed in testing meant Nakajima knew they were on to a good thing in 2019

Palou laid down a marker with the fastest time in pre-season testing at Suzuka, meaning confidence within Nakajima was high going into the opening round at the same track. But come qualifying it was Makino who stole the show, pipping Palou by 0.029 seconds to take a shock debut pole - which still stands as his only Super Formula pole four years later.

The following day however, the team returned to earth with a bump. Having briefly lost and then regained second, Palou was slapped with a drive-through penalty early on due to a start procedure infraction, leaving Makino alone at the head of the field. But an early safety car period ruined his strategy of starting on soft tyres, effectively forcing him to pit during the intervention and run most of the race on the significantly slower medium tyre.

Makino found himself relegated to fourth by the time he suffered a right-rear wheel failure exiting Spoon that pitched him into the barriers. By this time, Palou had dropped out of the running with a loss of drive, but his victory hopes had already been severely damaged by the safety car ruining the soft tyre starters’ strategies - conversely helping TOM'S man Cassidy to victory.

Despite the disappointment of Suzuka, Palou didn’t have to wait too long for his first victory, which came in torrential conditions at Fuji three months later. That track was also the scene of his first of three poles, the last of which came in the season finale at Suzuka - where a loose cooling tube denied him a clear shot at becoming a rookie champion.

Palou was unlucky to miss out on the title in his rookie season

Palou was third in the final standings behind Cassidy and Yamamoto, but Makino’s struggles later in the year meant Nakajima finished a distant third in the teams’ standings behind Dandelion and TOM’S. While pointing out that Makino was the victim of several mechanical issues, Koike believes that his preference for understeer held him back.

“His driving style was not that well suited to the Nakajima Racing set-up,” says Koike of Makino. “This was clear in 2020 when Toshiki Oyu joined the team and was faster. Tadasuke likes rear stability, but Toshiki is more like Alex in the sense of being able to adapt to oversteer. To make more rotation is very important with the SF19 compared to the SF14, so the driver has to adapt to oversteer.”

Nakajima hasn’t quite maintained the blistering form with which it opened the SF19 era, not helped by Koike’s departure to Mugen - which helped Tomoki Nojiri find the one-lap pace needed to go from fringe contender to the championship’s dominant force.

But the arrival of the SF23 this season offers another valuable chance for teams like Nakajima to make progress, and a change in the competitive order as dramatic as the one we saw 2019 looks possible.