As Motorsport.com reports, Kakunoshin Ohta's charge toward an early Super Formula title completely unravelled in a chaotic, incident-packed second race at Fuji. The Dandelion Racing driver arrived at the venue needing to outfinish Saturday winner Igor Fraga to secure the crown with two races to spare, but a wild 41-lap contest instead blew the championship wide open.
Everything seemed to be going according to plan in the early stages. Pole-sitter Fraga lost the lead on the opening lap to Ayumu Iwasa, while Ohta sliced past the Nakajima Racing machine to grab second by lap four. An early safety car period—triggered when Yuto Nomura stopped following contact with Toshiki Oyu—did nothing to upset the order at the front. But the race turned upside down during the mandatory pit stop cycle on lap 17, when Oyu pitted early and undercut Ohta. The two came to blows at Turn 3, sending the Cerumo/Inging driver into a spin. Although Ohta emerged unscathed, the delay allowed Fraga to execute an overcut after pitting on the following lap.
Desperate to recover track position over his title rival, Ohta launched an ambitious, wide-running lunge at the downhill Turn 10 right-hander. Moments later, he tried an unorthodox passing maneuver at Turn 15, only to smash straight into the side of Fraga. The contact eliminated Ohta instantly and left the Brazilian's car carrying heavy left-side damage. That disaster triggered another safety car deployment, which brought a chaotic bottleneck in the pit lane as the remaining cars rushed in. Rookie Racing's Nirei Fukuzumi was released directly into the path of Williams Formula 1 reserve driver Luke Browning. Browning appeared to check up, only to be rear-ended by Syun Koide, whose Kondo Racing machine became wedged between Fukuzumi and Koide before Rikuto Kobayashi piled into the back of Koide in the carnage.
When racing resumed on lap 25, Iwasa commanded the field ahead of Nobuharu Matsushita and Zak O'Sullivan. But the green flag lasted barely a heartbeat before the safety car reappeared because Sho Tsuboi slammed into the back of fourth-placed Kenta Yamashita after his brakes seemingly failed completely. The final restart came on lap 32, and Iwasa delivered a flawless launch to secure his first victory of a challenging title defence for Team Mugen. Behind him, the battle for the remaining podium steps raged until the very end. O'Sullivan, who slipped to fifth early on, carved his way past Oyu and Tadasuke Makino before launching a gritty last-lap move on Matsushita at the Turn 13 right-hander. The Team Impul driver shoved Matsushita wide to snatch second, escaping without a penalty.
O'Sullivan revealed after the chequered flag that the outing marked his final appearance in Super Formula ahead of a switch to Formula E, with pre-season testing commitments ruling him out of the Suzuka finale. Matsushita claimed third to deliver Delightworks Racing its second podium of their debut season, while Oyu took fourth, and Sacha Fenestraz (TOM'S) wrestled fifth away from Makino (Dandelion) in the closing stages. Completing the top 10 were Tomoki Nojiri (Mugen), Charlie Wurz (Team Goh), Giuliano Alesi (KCMG)—who bagged his first points of the year—and Fukuzumi. In the standings, Iwasa leaps past Fraga to become Ohta's closest challenger, though he still faces a 33.5-point deficit with only 46 points left on the table at Suzuka next month.
