Impul's rebuilding process underway after painful Pourchaire snub
A look at the scale of the task Team Impul has ahead of it after suffering its worst-ever start to a season in Super Formula... (All photos: JRP)
There’s no way to sugar coat the awful start to the Super Formula season that Team Impul has had in 2024. After the first three rounds, it has just two points to its credit from Yuji Kunimoto finishing seventh in a red-flagged Sugo race. This time last year, it had 22 points courtesy of a pair of podiums for Ryo Hirakawa, and the year before, it actually led the teams’ championship by a single point by Team Mugen.
To put Impul’s wretched start to 2024 into further perspective, not since the year 2000 has the team built by Kazuyoshi Hoshino failed to score a podium in the first three races of the season. And since Hoshino-san hung up his helmet in the first year of Super Formula’s modern era in 1996, the team has never finished lower than fifth in the teams’ standings (doing so last year and in 2017). It currently sits ninth.
Clearly, a lack of stability in the team since Theo Pourchaire infamously decided to pull the plug on his Super Formula adventure after just one race hasn’t helped matters. But Pourchaire’s exit is a symptom, not the cause, of the team’s woes.