Defending two-time champion Nojiri holds a slim championship lead over Suzuka winner Ritomo Miyata three rounds into the 2023 season despite crashing out of last month’s race at the Formula 1 venue following contact with Toshiki Oyu.
Lawson sits third in the standings, having finished fourth in the Suzuka race, with only seven points splitting he and Nojiri with six races to go.
But Tomo Koike, Lawson’s race engineer at Mugen, says he is more concerned by the strong form shown by Inging driver Tsuboi, who is fourth in the championship after scoring back-to-back second place finishes at Fuji and Suzuka.
While Lawson has struggled for one-lap pace against Nojiri but has often been faster in race trim, Koike believes Tsuboi’s speed in both qualifying and the race at Suzuka is a cause for concern as the series moves on to Autopolis this week.
“We have to be careful about the #1 car [Nojiri], but I’m particularly afraid of Tsuboi,” Koike told Motorsport.com. “He is the only driver who has managed to be strong in both qualifying and the race at Suzuka, so they have found a good compromise set-up.
“Nojiri is really struggling with his race set-up at the moment, but we share all the data [within Mugen], so he may be strong in the next race. But it’s harder to fight against Cerumo [Inging] because we don’t know what they are doing in detail.
“It looks like their set-up should be good for rear tyre management. But I don’t know why they can make a good lap time in qualifying as well. Our car is good for rear tyres but hard to make a good lap time in qualifying.
“It’s hard to find the right compromise, but Tsuboi is doing a good job, so we need to find a hint on that side.”
Autopolis was not an especially strong venue for Mugen last year, being one of just two tracks all year at which Nojiri failed to score a podium during his dominant 2022 campaign.
But Koike believes that there’s no reason to think that Lawson will be uncompetitive at the undulating Kyushu track assuming that the current warm weather forecast holds.
“The strongest point about our set-up is the out lap and the early stages of the race when the tyre pressures are low,” said Koike. “We are really strong in hot conditions. So we hope that Autopolis will have high track temperatures.
“Our set-up doesn’t work in cooler conditions like we had towards the end of the last race.
“I’m not sure what set-up will work there with the SF23, but we found a good set-up for Suzuka in terms of race pace, and Autopolis has fairly similar characteristics, so it should be good for us.”
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