Winners and losers from Super Formula's Suzuka opener
A look at who was up and who was down as the 2025 Super Formula season kicked off last weekend with a double-header at Suzuka Circuit... (Photos: JRP, Honda)
WINNER: Sho Tsuboi
Any hopes the opposition may have had about Super Formula’s new tyres blunting the strength of Sho Tsuboi and TOM’S heading into the new season will have had those hopes cruelly dashed by the events of last weekend at Suzuka, as the driver of the #1 car came away from an unfavourable circuit with a generous helping of points.
Saturday’s fourth-place finish owed more to the good fortune of a quick turnaround by his TOM’S crew in a crowded pitlane and the likes of Tomoki Nojiri and Tadasuke Makino dropping down the order from having to double-stack than anything else. But Sunday’s race was a true Tsuboi masterclass: fourth in qualifying, splitting the Dandelion cars, and then a magnificent second in the race. Such was his pace that it would have almost certainly been second even without Kakunoshin Ohta’s penalty.
Hearing Tsuboi say that he pitted on the same lap as Makino because he was targeting second, and not trying for the impossible task of leapfrogging the leader, summed up well why the TOM’S driver is so formidable — he knows when he has to win, and he knows when he needs to bank points. Next comes Motegi, the worst track on the calendar for the team, but his rivals had better watch out after that: Autopolis, Fuji, Sugo, then Fuji again. Six races where the #1 could well be, well, number one.
WINNER: Igor Fraga
Along with the likes of Tadasuke Makino and Shun Koide, Igor Fraga would have been counting his lucky stars that Super Formula’s opening weekend at Suzuka had been turned into a double-header at about 4pm on Saturday. For the Brazilian’s debut, which had shown so much promise, could hardly have gone any worse. Fortunately for him, an excellent drive to fifth in Sunday’s second race completely transformed perceptions of his weekend and put him in the early lead for ‘Rookie of the Year’.
Going back to Saturday’s opener Fraga suffered the indignity of going off the track at the hairpin on one of his reconnaissance laps during the first trial for the new F1-style system that has essentially replaced the old ‘eight-minute warm-up’ of old. Luckily, the damage to his car was minimal, and there was enough time for it to be recovered so he could take the start from the pit lane. Fraga said he had tried to simulate the out lap he would face on cold tyres during the race, and simply pushed too hard.
Some drivers would have allowed that one tiny error to cast a cloud over the whole weekend. But not Fraga, who despite an underwhelming second qualifying (14th, instead of eighth the previous day), turned in one of the drives of the race with an early pit stop paying dividends. Although he gained two free places from Ohta’s penalty and an excruciatingly slow stop for his Nakajima teammate Ren Sato, nobody would have begrudged Fraga a dash of fortune after such a fine afternoon’s work.
