Autopolis Super Formula: Lawson wins to take championship lead

Capitalising on the absence of Mugen team-mate and reigning champion Tomoki Nojiri, Lawson recovered from a poor start to clinch victory by 1.2 seconds in the fourth round of the season, despite a late safety car putting him at a disadvantage to his immediate rivals.

When the 41-lap race got underway, Lawson was unable to challenge polesitter Sho Tsuboi for the lead and slipped behind the other Inging car of Sena Sakaguchi, with Miyata nearly demoting Lawson to fourth on a poor opening lap for the Kiwi.

But Lawson pitted early at the end of lap 13 and then used the advantage of fresher tyres to full effect, even as a number of yet-to-stop cars cost him nearly three seconds to the leaders.

This allowed him to immediately get the jump on Sakaguchi, who pitted just one lap later, and put him in an indirect fight with Tsuboi and Miyata, both having elected to run long in the first stint.

Initially, Tsuboi remained the favourite for victory as he stretched out a lead of nearly 5s over Miyata, and put himself well over 30s clear of Lawson.

But as his tyres began to wear, Tsuboi’s advantage began to dwindle and Miyata was able to bring the gap down to under a second by lap 24, with Lawson also closing in on the Inging driver.

Aware his tyres were well past their peak, Tsuboi finally headed to the pits at the end of lap 25, but despite some quick work by the Inging crew he emerged on track behind Lawson, who assumed the net lead of the race.

However, the race wasn’t yet won for Lawson, who had to remain wary of Miyata’s TOM’S car still running at the front of the pack.

A clash between Toshiki Oyu and Sakaguchi at Turn 11 that beached the TGM driver on lap 30 brought out the safety car, giving Miyata the perfect opportunity to complete his pitstop.

But although Miyata pitted under caution, the safety car hadn’t picked up the leaders and the TOM’S driver emerged behind Lawson and Tsuboi in third place, handing Lawson a reprieve.

When the safety car period ended, Lawson’s tyres were much older than both Tsuboi’s and Miyata’s, but the Kiwi made a perfect restart and then set about building a gap up front, eventually taking a comfortable second win in Super Formula in four attempts.

Miyata passed Tsuboi at Turn 1 with three laps to go to claim second, backing up his stunning victory drive at Suzuka from last month.

It means Lawson leads the standings by four points from Miyata, with Tsuboi 11 behind in third.

Fourth place in the race went to Kondo’s Kenta Yamashita, who was among a small group of drivers to benefit from the late-race period safety car.

Impul’s Ryo Hirakawa also stopped on lap 30 like Yamashita and passed both Tadasuke Makino - the first driver to pit on lap 10 - and Nakajima Racing’s Ren Sato to finish fifth.

Nirei Fukuzumi bagged a third consecutive points finish for the rebranded ThreeBond team, while Naoki Yamamoto was able to recover from a poor start to finish inside the points in ninth.

KCMG duo Yuji Kunimoto and Kamui Kobayashi were classified 10th and 11th respectively, the former grabbing his first points finish of the season.

Autopolis Super Formula - Race results:

 

Cla	#	Driver	Team	Laps	Gap
1	15	Liam Lawson	Team Mugen	41
2	37	Ritomo Miyata	Vantelin Team TOM'S	41	1.255
3	38	Sho Tsuboi	JMS P.mu/cerumo-INGING	41	5.265
4	3	Kenta Yamashita	Kondo Racing	41	5.569
5	20	Ryo Hirakawa	ITOCHU ENEX TEAM IMPUL	41	6.556
6	5	Tadasuke Makino	Dandelion Racing	41	12.181
7	65	Ren Sato	TCS Nakajima Racing	41	14.442
8	12	Nirei Fukuzumi	ThreeBond Racing	41	18.391
9	64	Naoki Yamamoto	TCS Nakajima Racing	41	20.989
10	18	Yuji Kunimoto	Team KCMG	41	22.023
11	7	Kamui Kobayashi	Team KCMG	41	22.394
12	14	Kazuya Oshima	docomo business ROOKIE	41	23.216
13	36	Giuliano Alesi	Vantelin Team TOM'S	41	24.780
14	1	Hiroki Otsu	Team Mugen	41	25.064
15	55	Cem Bolukbasi	TGM Grand Prix	41	25.496
16	19	Yuhi Sekiguchi	ITOCHU ENEX TEAM IMPUL	41	26.222
17	6	Kakunoshin Ota	Dandelion Racing	41	29.642
18	51	Raoul Hyman	B-Max Racing Team	41	29.933
19	4	Kazuto Kotaka	Kondo Racing	41	40.387
20	50	Nobuharu Matsushita	B-Max Racing Team	35	6 Laps
21	39	Sena Sakaguchi	JMS P.mu/cerumo-INGING	34	7 Laps
22	53	Toshiki Oyu	TGM Grand Prix	28	13 Laps
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