Last season, Nojiri’s eighth in Super Formula, was when everything finally clicked for the Team Mugen driver, as he won three races out of seven to become the first driver in more than a decade to wrap up the title with a round to spare.
This year has undoubtedly been tougher for Nojiri, who has only added one more win to his tally so far against slightly stiffer opposition. But his unparalleled consistency, especially in qualifying, means he practically already has one hand on a second crown with just a pair of races at Suzuka to go.
With 46 points up for grabs, Nojiri is 32 clear of nearest rival Sacha Fenestraz, meaning 15 points - the equivalent of a second-place finish - across the weekend would be enough to make him the first driver to successfully defend the title in Japan's top single-seater series since Tsugio Matsuda in 2008.
Considering Nojiri’s recent form, it’s easy to forget that for much of his career he had been quick on occasion but wildly inconsistent. Indeed, 2021 marked just the second year that he had been able to score more than one podium finish in the same season.
He made his debut for Dandelion Racing back in 2014, and a win at Sugo (his only points finish that year) meant he outscored his more experienced teammate Hideki Mutoh.
A more consistent season for Nojiri followed in 2015, and he easily had the measure of Narain Karthikeyan. But come 2016, he was faced with a teammate of an altogether different calibre as McLaren-backed Vandoorne was parachuted into the #41 Dandelion car.
Vandoorne arrived in Super Formula as a GP2 champion and clearly ready to race in F1 full-time, a chance he would get in 2017 with McLaren after an impressive season that yielded a pair of race wins and fourth in the points, best of the Honda-powered drivers. That was despite the language barrier and not having raced at any of the tracks beforehand.
Nojiri on the other hand couldn’t build on the relative promise of 2015, managing only a single podium finish all year at Sugo. He ended the year ninth overall, having accrued a shade over half of the points tally of his rookie teammate.
“Honestly, I had never been so outclassed by a teammate before that season,” Nojiri said in an interview with Motorsport.com’s Japanese edition.
“Of course there were times I would sometimes lose out in certain sessions, but I had never felt that there was a gap that would be impossible to bridge. It was a tough time for me, but I learned a lot about how to drive and how to work inside the team.”
Nojiri is now regarded as one of the hardest-working drivers in the paddock, renowned for his attention to detail and meticulous preparation.
But he admits that, back in 2016, Vandoorne’s hunger for results was much bigger than his own, conditioned by his relative lack of success in Super Formula up to that point, and that seeing the Belgian’s efforts made him realise he wasn’t working hard enough.
“[Vandoorne] wasn’t satisfied with just a few good results,” said Nojiri. “For me, it had been a while since I had won anything, so I was just happy if I could be on the podium. But if he won a race, he would immediately start working on what he had to do to get the next win.
“I got the impression he was pretty serious and I could feel he was giving it absolutely everything to get to F1. I thought I should learn from him and I was glad I could see it up close. I realised that I wasn’t serious enough.
“In terms of driving, I used to draw lines in my mind like, ‘this feels about right’, or ‘this is about the maximum’. But because he was there, I could see a new benchmark in my mind.”
After Vandoorne left Super Formula, Nojiri suffered a dire season in 2017, managing only one points finish and being beaten by teammate Takuya Izawa, albeit in a year that most of the Honda-powered drivers struggled.
But in his final season at Dandelion in 2018 he had the measure of rookie Nobuharu Matsushita before making the switch to the Mugen squad he has now truly made his own.
That move proved to be the making of Nojiri, who ended a five-year wait for a second win in 2019, became an outside title contender in 2020 and then finally stamped his authority on the championship last year, usurping Naoki Yamamoto as Honda’s top dog.
Vandoorne meanwhile found refuge in Formula E after his two-year F1 stint with McLaren didn’t go as planned, eventually becoming world champion in the all-electric series with Mercedes earlier this year.
It seems highly unlikely that the paths of the two drivers will cross again, but Nojiri says he would be keen for a rematch against Vandoorne to measure the progress he has made in the last six years.
“Ideally, I’d like another chance to fight against him,” said Nojiri. “Not in a different team, but in the same team.
“Probably he doesn’t see it that way! But I was on the losing side, so I’d really like to know how far I’ve come against him since then.”
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