Sato fastest as Super Formula rookie test comes to close

After crashing twice on his way to the sixth-fastest time overall during the first day of testing on Wednesday, Sato enjoyed a much smoother day on Thursday, setting a best time of 1m35.332s in the closing stages of the two-hour afternoon session.

Miyata had topped the morning session, but fell just 0.018s short of Sato as most drivers equipped new tyres for their final runs.

Naoki Yamamoto, who had paced the first day of the test, ended up third-fastest on Thursday 0.115s slower than the driver that is expected to become his new teammate at Nakajima next season.

It came as the two Nakajima drivers swapped cars for the second day of testing, with Sato taking over the #64 car usually driven by Yamamoto and the three-time champion taking over the #65 machine.

Kakunoshin Ota was by far the best of the rookies in fourth place for Dandelion Racing, narrowly shading Hiroki Otsu in a boost to his chances of landing a full-time seat at the team for next year.

 

Next-best of the six newcomers was Seita Nonaka, who took over in the #7 KCMG car on Thursday with Kamui Kobayashi having to head to Italy for this week's FIA Prize Giving along with Ryo Hirakawa.

Nonaka ended up 13th-fastest, just behind his KCMG teammate Yuji Kunimoto.

Igor Fraga was 17th on his second day of testing for Team Impul, leading a quartet of international drivers.

Red Bull junior Liam Lawson, 10th-fastest overall on Wednesday, was only 16th in the afternoon as one of a handful of drivers not to improve his time in the closing stages, and 18th in the combined timesheets.

 

Cem Bolukbasi was 19th in his Servus Japan-run 'Team TBD' entry, while Raoul Hyman was 20th for B-Max Racing after suffering a crash at Degner in the closing stages of the afternoon session.

In his first day of driving for TOM'S, Ukyo Sasahara was 15th-quickest, going marginally slower than his rival for the vacant seat alongside Miyata, Giuliano Alesi, had managed on Wednesday.

However, Sasahara was unable to complete his final flying lap on new tyres owing to Hyman's crash.

After an opening day of testing punctuated by seven red flags, there were only two stoppages on Thursday - one in the morning when Hyman's B-Max car came to a stop, and a second in the afternoon when the Dandelion car of Ota likewise ground to a halt.

Suzuka testing Day 2 results:

Pos.	No.	Driver	Team/Engine	Morning	Afternoon
1	64	Ren Sato	Nakajima/Honda	1m36.265s	1m35.332s
2	37	Ritomo Miyata	TOM'S/Toyota	1m35.535s	1m35.350s
3	65	Naoki Yamamoto	Nakajima/Honda	1m35.690s	1m35.447s
4	6	Kakunoshin Ota	Dandelion/Honda	1m36.061s	1m35.642s
5	5	Hiroki Otsu	Dandelion/Honda	1m36.162s	1m35.670s
6	20	Yuhi Sekiguchi	Impul/Toyota	1m36.282s	1m35.690s
7	50	Nobuharu Matsushita	B-Max/Honda	1m36.452s	1m35.717s
8	3	Kenta Yamashita	Kondo/Toyota	1m35.952s	1m35.757s
9	39	Sena Sakaguchi	Inging/Toyota	1m36.131s	1m35.799s
10	38	Sho Tsuboi	Inging/Toyota	1m35.972s	1m36.133s
11	12	Nirei Fukuzumi	Drago Corse/Honda	1m36.672s	1m36.117s
12	18	Yuji Kunimoto	KCMG/Toyota	1m37.568s	1m36.279s
13	7	Seita Nonaka	KCMG/Toyota	1m36.846s	1m36.292s
14	14	Kazuya Oshima	Rookie/Toyota	1m36.430s	1m36.933s
15	36	Ukyo Sasahara	TOM'S/Toyota	1m37.392s	1m36.465s
16	4	Kazuto Kotaka	Kondo/Toyota	1m36.643s	1m37.046s
17	19	Igor Fraga	Impul/Toyota	1m37.080s	1m36.648s
18	15	Liam Lawson	Mugen/Honda	1m36.758s	1m36.816s
19	33	Cem Bolukbasi	Servus/Honda*	1m36.971s	1m36.973s
20	51	Raoul Hyman	B-Max/Honda	1m38.153s	1m38.362s

* car officially entered as 'Team TBD'