Ayumu Iwasa fears he won’t be able to fight for this year’s Super Formula title unless his Team Mugen crew makes a major effort to improve its startline performance.
Red Bull junior Iwasa qualified second for last weekend’s fourth round of the season at Fuji, and looked to be in a strong position to close the gap to Mugen team-mate Tomoki Nojiri at the head of the drivers’ standings.
But a disastrous getaway saw Iwasa plummet to 11th on the opening lap, and after conceding two more places on the second lap, he was unable to make significant progress and ended up finishing out of the points in 11th.
Nojiri meanwhile recovered from seventh on the grid to finish third and extend his points lead, and now sits 9.5 points ahead of Fuji winner Sho Tsuboi [TOM'S].
Speaking post-race, Iwasa made it clear that he sees it as the responsibility of his side of the Mugen garage to improve matters after slipping 15.5 points behind Nojiri.
“When it comes to the team’s strength regarding starts and the approach, I think we are the worst in the field," said Iwasa.
“Generally, we are delivering good performances, in terms of qualifying speed and race pace, but in terms of starts, the team’s performance is very low.
“There’s not one person responsible for that, so everyone in the team needs to work together to improve things. In the current situation, nobody thinks we’ll be able to make a good start in the future.
“If we don’t get our act together as a team regarding starts, then we won’t be able to win a race, let alone fight for the championship.
“Team Mugen is seen as a strong team, but what me and the engineers feel is that starts are a major weak point. This is something fundamental.”
Iwasa also suffered a poor start from pole in the second round of the season at Autopolis, although on that occasion he recovered to finish second behind Tadasuke Makino.
His race engineer Tomohiko Koike made it clear he didn’t see the poor start that ruined Iwasa's Fuji race as a driver error.
“The key to the start is the bite point of the clutch, but how much throttle is applied is decided by the throttle map,” said Koike.
“It’s difficult for the driver to control it properly just through his feet, so we have a start mode throttle map that means the car doesn’t move as easily.
“The throttle and clutch will basically carry out what is decided in advance, so it's almost never the case that a driver messes up the start by making an operational mistake.”
