FAST-TRACK TO THE TOP

The likes of Gasly, Lawson and Vandoorne have all impressed in the far east, and now WRC's Kalle Rovanperä is making the leap too. As Jamie Klein reveals, Japan is a route to racing's big-time

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What’s the second-fastest category of motor racing on the planet after Formula 1? Formula 2? IndyCar? WEC Hypercar? Think again. The answer in fact is Super Formula, Japan’s top single-seater championship. And what about the fastest category of tin-tops - surely, nothing beats Hypercar? In fact, the GT500 class in Super GT is comfortably faster.

At Suzuka, the lap record for Super Formula is 1min 34.442sec set by Nick Cassidy in 2020. That would have cleared the 107% mark (just) for the previous year’s Japanese Grand Prix. As for GT500, the lap record around Fuji Speedway is 1min 25.764sec set by Nirei Fukuzumi in 2021, which is about 2.5sec faster than the WEC pole time from 2024. You'd have to go back several years to the tail end of the LMP1 era to find faster times than that.

These figures go a long way to explaining the ongoing appeal of Japan's domestic racing scene to overseas drivers. Ask almost any driver who has come to Japan from abroad why they made the move, and the cars are often the first thing they talk about.

Sacha Fenestraz, who raced in Japan from 2019 to 2022, and is back this year after a two-year sojourn in Formula E, says: “You get to drive two of the best cars in the world. They are amazing with the amount of downforce they have, the tyres, plus you get to drive a lot. In Europe it’s not like that any more. As a driver you can develop a lot.”

Part of what makes Super Formula so quick is the spec Dallara chassis tips the scales at just 677kg, including the driver, over 100kg less than F1, while producing an impressive amount of downforce. Exact power figures produced by the Honda and Toyota four-cylinder turbo engines are a closely guarded trade secret, but are estimated to be in the 600-650bhp range. And the spec Yokohama tyre allows drivers to push throughout a race.