On Saturday, Nojiri seemed well on his way to defending his Super Formula title. He had just taken his third pole position on the trot, extending his championship lead over Ryo Hirakawa to 19 points in the process, and went into the race with the bonus of starting Sunday’s race seven places clear of his main rival – and on a track where passing is notoriously tough.
And yet, come 4pm on Sunday, it was Hirakawa who was celebrating an improbable win from eighth on the grid, while Nojiri trailed home fourth, his points lead slashed to seven.
Championship standings after Autopolis:
| Pos | Driver | Points | Fuji* | Suzuka | AP | Sugo | Fuji | Motegi* | Suzuka* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Tomoki Nojiri | 67 | 38 | 18 | 11 | - | - | - | - |
| 2 | Ryo Hirakawa | 60 | 36 | 4 | 20 | - | - | - | - |
| 3 |  Sacha Fenestraz | 35 | 11 | 9 | 15 | - | - | - | - |
| 4 | Ritomo Miyata | 27 | 19 | - | 8 | - | - | - | - |
| 5 | Tadasuke Makino | 22 | 5 | 11 | 6 | - | - | - | - |
| 6 | Nobuharu Matsushita | 21 | - | 20 | 1 | - | - | - | - |
* denotes double-header event
On first glance, it might seem that Team Mugen was simply outfoxed on strategy. All the drivers that made their mandatory pitstops later benefitted from doing so, and those that pulled the trigger too early exposed themselves to being overcut.
Nojiri was among the earlier stoppers as he came in for fresh Yokohama tyres on lap 15 of 42, five laps earlier than Hirakawa. Not only did the reigning champion lose the net lead, Sacha Fenestraz (lap 28) and Atsushi Miyake (lap 32) added insult to injury by pitting even later and occupying the space that opened up between the two title protagonists.
But the worrying thing for Nojiri is that he simply didn’t have the speed at Autopolis to cope with Hirakawa’s Team Impul machine, making it unlikely he would have been able to win with any strategy once Hirakawa had vaulted up to second place with a storming opening lap and subsequent pass on an ailing Tadasuke Makino.
A look at the laptimes tells the story. In his second stint, which began in earnest on lap 22 (lap 21 being his out lap), Hirakawa slipped outside of the 1m30s bracket on just three occasions, and his final nine laps were all in that range.
Nojiri on the other hand registered just three laps faster than 1m31s once he had changed tyres. His pace at the end of the race wasn’t terrible – his final lap was a 1m31.401s, versus Hirakawa’s 1m30.877s – but he was giving away time virtually every lap, also relative to Fenestraz and Miyake.
And it wasn’t like Nojiri was being held up, either. Although he barely beat Ritomo Miyata to Turn 1 when the TOM’S driver left the pits, he had clean air throughout both his stints.
“At first I wanted to extend the first stint, I was aiming to go half-distance,” reflected Nojiri post-race. “But the car and the tyres were in bad shape, so I couldn’t increase the pace, and so while discussing with the team we decided to come in on [lap 15].
“It felt like there was no difference between the first set of tyres and the second set. I was surprised that I couldn’t up the pace in the first few laps on the second set, so we need to analyse that, but worse than that, we couldn’t get rid of the fundamental problem even by adjusting the set-up through the weekend.”
Nojiri mentioned on Saturday after bagging pole position that he had suffered with terrible understeer during that morning’s free practice session, thanking the Mugen crew for dialling this out by the time of qualifying. Chief engineer Toshihiro Ichise speculated that the warmer conditions of qualifying masked the problem by naturally inducing oversteer.
But instead of that issue recurring in the race, Nojiri revealed a different issue that had slowed him down and kept him from challenging Hirakawa.
“I couldn’t keep the load on the tyres,” he said. “There was a lot of bouncing, and when the tyre ‘floats’, even if it subsequently regains load, it doesn’t grip in the same way as it does when there is a consistent load. That meant the grip in the corners was poor, so we need to think about what we do now to address that.”
Post-race, Nojiri went to inspect the state of the tyres of Hirakawa and his rivals, which only served the confirm that set-up, not excessive tyre wear, was the cause for his woes.
“I realised that everyone was suffering about the same with the tyres, and that tyre wear was not the cause of our troubles,” he said. “As soon as I saw [Hirakawa’s] tyres, I realised that the cause was the thing that I was worried about since the start of the week.”
Nojiri’s fourth-place finish brought to an end a streak of podium finishes stretching back to last year’s season finale at Suzuka, and leaves him with with plenty of food for thought heading to next month's round at Sugo, the scene of Nojiri’s worst result, a sixth-place finish, in 2021.
Conversely, Hirakawa was strong on his last visit to Sugo in 2020 (he missed last year’s race to take part in an audition with the Toyota WEC squad, which turned out to be a worthwhile sacrifice), and certainly winning from eighth on the grid on Sunday is going to give Hirakawa plenty of confidence.
Impul boss Kazuyoshi Hoshino even joked to the TV cameras that Hirakawa “is even better than I was”, adding in the team bosses’ press conference: “I think Hirakawa’s performance today might have been his most amazing ever."
It’s far from inconceivable that an in-form Hirakawa could overturn Nojiri’s remaining points lead if all goes well for him at Sugo, although it ought to be noted that if qualifying bonus points are disregarded (Nojiri has nine to Hirakawa’s one), the Impul man would already be ahead.
Of course, there are still another five races to go after Sugo and much can happen in that time. Hirakawa only knows this too well after seeing a solid points lead in 2020 evaporate with a series of misfortunes, with a qualifying crash and then a slow pitstop at Autopolis arguably marking the turning point in his battle against Naoki Yamamoto that year.
But it’s certainly possible that the Kyushu circuit might prove to be the point at which Nojiri’s hitherto seemingly irresistible march to a second consecutive title was, if not halted, then at least thrown into serious doubt.
Additional reporting by Kenichiro Ebii
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