Major moves afoot in Super Formula's engineer 'silly season'
The driver lineup for the upcoming Super Formula grid may be set, but there are set to be numerous changes to who is running the cars.... (Photos: JRP)
Following last week’s news of Juju Noda returning to Super Formula with the newly-created Triple Tree Racing outfit, the full 22-car grid for 2025 is now set.
What we still don’t know for sure is how each team’s exact structure will look. Some teams are better than others at providing this information, but luckily for us curious journalists and fans, the official Super Formula website, starting last year, has made a big effort to publish names and photos of all the key players from each squad, including the race engineers, track engineers and lead/second mechanics.
With Super Formula teams typically being fairly small compared to those found in other major championships, personnel changes can have a profound effect on a team or driver’s level of competitiveness. The relationship between driver and race engineer is crucial, and so is whether their respective styles are compatible — it’s not uncommon for top drivers to swap engineers if things are not working out.
The last two titles have been won by the same engineer: Masaki Saeda of TOM’S, who took Ritomo Miyata to the title in 2023 and then repeated the trick last year with Miyata’s replacement Sho Tsuboi. But perhaps the best example of a driver and engineer helping elevate each other to greatness is that of two-time champion Tomoki Nojiri and his long-time race engineer Toshihiro Ichise at Team Mugen.
As reported here at the end of last year, Ichise has left Mugen parent company M-TEC, and early in the new year he revealed via social media that he had established his own company dedicated to simulation. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Nojiri’s former partner-in-crime is stepping away from Super Formula entirely.