Sugo Super Formula: Miyata wins to snatch points lead from Lawson
TOM’S driver Ritomo Miyata scored his second victory of the 2023 Super Formula season at Sugo to snatch the championship lead from Red Bull junior Liam Lawson.
From second on the grid, Miyata passed polesitter and early leader Toshiki Oyu on lap 13 of 51 and then enjoyed a relatively straightforward run to the finish, claiming a dominant 22-second win.
With Mugen’s Lawson finishing only fifth due with a strategy that backfired, Miyata overturned what had been a two-point deficit in the standings to take a 12-point lead into the final four races of the season.
When the race started, Oyu made a clean start from pole for TGM Grand Prix to retain the lead into Turn 1 from Miyata, as both Mugen’s Tomoki Nojiri and Impul’s Ryo Hirakawa both got away poorly to promote Sho Tsuboi and Lawson into third and fourth positions.
Further back, Miyata’s team-mate Giuliano Alesi lost control all by himself into Turn 5, with an innocent Yuhi Sekiguchi making contact with the TOM'S driver and picking up a broken front wing.
With Sekiguchi limping back to the pits with his front wing stuck underneath his Impul machine, the safety car was immediately deployed, neutralising the battle at the front.
Racing resumed on lap five after both Sekiguchi and Alesi retired from the race, with Oyu doing enough to hold onto his advantage from Miyata.
But as the race wore on, it became clear that Oyu was struggling for performance, giving Miyata a sniff of victory.
On lap 12, Miyata got a brilliant run coming out of the final turn and, using the OTS, the TOM’S driver blasted past Oyu at the start/finish straight, taking the lead well before the braking point into Turn 1.
On the next lap it was Tsuboi who was challenging Oyu, the Inging driver trying to go around the outside of the TGM driver into Turn 1. But while Tsuboi was only just alongside, Oyu lost the rear and went into the gravel trap, dropping all the way down to eighth and elevating Tsuboi into second.
This would set up a two-way fight between Miyata and Tsuboi for the lead, with Miyata pitting on lap 17 and Tsuboi staying out on track for longer in the ostensible hope of a safety car.
But the safety car that Tsuboi had hoped for never materialised and Miyata managed to punch in some rapid laps on fresh tyres, halving Tsuboi’s virtual advantage to under 13s.
That meant that when Tsuboi finally pitted for the lead on lap 35, he dropped all the way down to eighth, while Miyata assumed the effective lead of the race.
From there on, Miyata was untroubled up front as he claimed a second win of 2023 in three races, strengthening his bid for the title.
Nojiri, carrying a new chassis this weekend, rebounded from a slow start to finish second, having pitted on lap 12 to regain the positions he had lost on the opening lap.
The final position on the podium went to Dandelion’s Tadasuke Makino, who was one of the first drivers to pit on lap 11, with his strategy call allowing him to score a first top-three result since Motegi in 2022.
Rookie Racing’s Kazuya Oshima was another driver to benefit from an early pitstop, bagging his best result of the season in fourth.
Lawson was the last frontrunner to pit on lap 42 and lost a number of positions to his rivals, rejoining in eighth, but he made good advantage of fresh tyres in the final stages of the races, passing the KCMG car of Kamui Kobayashi on the final lap to complete a strong recovery drive to fifth.
Tsuboi eventually came home in seventh, while the points runners were completed by Kenta Yamashita (Kondo Racing), Yuji Kunimoto (KCMG) and Sena Sakaguchi (Inging).
Oyu eventually retired from the race after his car was wheeled back into the garage on lap 32.
Race results:
Cla | # | Driver | Team | Laps | Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 37 | Ritomo Miyata | Vantelin Team TOM'S | 51 | |
2 | 1 | Tomoki Nojiri | Team Mugen | 51 | 22.272 |
3 | 5 | Tadasuke Makino | Dandelion Racing | 51 | 26.961 |
4 | 14 | Kazuya Oshima | docomo business ROOKIE | 51 | 29.077 |
5 | 15 | Liam Lawson | Team Mugen | 51 | 29.223 |
6 | 7 | Kamui Kobayashi | Team KCMG | 51 | 29.949 |
7 | 38 | Sho Tsuboi | JMS P.mu/cerumo-INGING | 51 | 36.506 |
8 | 3 | Kenta Yamashita | Kondo Racing | 51 | 38.864 |
9 | 18 | Yuji Kunimoto | Team KCMG | 51 | 39.995 |
10 | 39 | Sena Sakaguchi | JMS P.mu/cerumo-INGING | 51 | 40.377 |
11 | 20 | Ryo Hirakawa | ITOCHU ENEX TEAM IMPUL | 51 | 40.418 |
12 | 65 | Ren Sato | TCS Nakajima Racing | 51 | 41.218 |
13 | 64 | Naoki Yamamoto | TCS Nakajima Racing | 51 | 54.394 |
14 | 4 | Kazuto Kotaka | Kondo Racing | 51 | 59.013 |
15 | 6 | Kakunoshin Ohta | Dandelion Racing | 51 | 1'03.420 |
16 | 12 | Nirei Fukuzumi | ThreeBond Racing | 51 | 1'04.028 |
17 | 55 | Cem Bolukbasi | TGM Grand Prix | 51 | 1'06.950 |
18 | 51 | Raoul Hyman | B-Max Racing Team | 50 | 1 Lap |
50 | Nobuharu Matsushita | B-Max Racing Team | 33 | 18 Laps | |
53 | Toshiki Oyu | TGM Grand Prix | 30 | 21 Laps | |
36 | Giuliano Alesi | Vantelin Team TOM'S | 3 | 48 Laps | |
View full results |
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