Explaining Team Mugen's first title-less Super Formula season in four years

A look at how the rules of the Super Formula engineering game changed in a direction less suited to the dominant team of the past few seasons... (Photos: Honda, JRP)

Earlier this year, I wrote an article entitled ‘Why common dampers have failed to knock Team Mugen off its stride’. At the time, Mugen duo Tomoki Nojiri and Ayumu Iwasa were first and second in the Super Formula standings, and it seemed that both Red Bull-liveried cars were likely to feature heavily in the fight for the drivers’ title. And the idea of Mugen losing the teams’ title seemed fanciful to say the least.

But now, here we are in late November, the Suzuka finale already fading into memory, and for the first time since 2020, the might of M-TEC, Honda’s flagship team that has the huge benefit of its close relationship with the Saitama auto giant, didn’t come away with either of the major championships. Iwasa winning Rookie of the Year against pretty feeble opposition won’t have come as much of a consolation prize.

At the time of the mid-season test at Fuji, with Nojiri having won two of the opening three races and Iwasa finishing second for two races in succession, much of the paddock talk centred around how strong Mugen was and how difficult it would be for anyone else to step up and take the fight to the defending teams’ champions.

And yet, a disappointing second half of the year paved the way for Dandelion Racing to steal away the teams’ title, aided by Kakunoshin Ohta’s dominant double victory at Suzuka. That left Mugen without a title for the first time since 2020, when Dandelion and TOM’S split the drivers’ and teams’ prizes between them - just as they did this year, with Sho Tsuboi taking home the drivers’ crown for the latter.

So what was it about the new common Ohlins dampers that finally knocked Mugen off its perch - and why where the signs not obvious in the first part of the year?