Super Formula points leader Kakunoshin Ohta went fastest in this week’s in-season test at Fuji, as Giuliano Alesi made his first outing in the category for three years.
Ohta set the quickest time of 1m22.361s aboard his Honda-powered Dandelion Racing car at the very end of the afternoon session on the second day of the two-day test, during the second of two 10-minute runs reserved for qualifying simulations.
That effort was enough to edge out Igor Fraga, who was comfortably fastest on the opening day of the test on Tuesday, by a slender margin of 0.017s off the top spot.
Ohta only barely made it to Fuji in time for the start of testing on Tuesday morning, having flown back to Japan after his appearance in last weekend’s IMSA SportsCar Championship round at Watkins Glen for Acura Meyer Shank Racing.
He showed no ill-effects of his hectic schedule as he topped the opening session, and ended up fourth behind Nakajima Racing driver Fraga, lead Toyota runner Sho Tsuboi (TOM’S) and Tadasuke Makino (Dandelion) in the afternoon that day.
More favourable conditions on Wednesday proved conducive to fast lap times as both Ohta and Fraga dipped under last year’s Fuji pole record of 1m22.417s.
Tsuboi was again best of the Toyota runners in third, 0.146s off the pace, while Rookie Racing’s Nirei Fukuzumi was fourth at the track where he is poised to make his Formula 1 test debut later this month as part of the Haas team’s TPC [testing of previous cars] event.
Fraga’s Nakajima team-mate Ren Sato, fastest on Wednesday morning, completed the top five for both the afternoon and the test as a whole.
Nirei Fukuzumi will test an F1 car with Haas later this year
Photo by: Masahide Kamio
Tomoki Nojiri led the Team Mugen charge in sixth, but his reigning champion team-mate Ayumu Iwasa was only a subdued 15th-fastest.
Makino ended up 11th-fastest in the second Dandelion car, 0.567s adrift of Ohta.
Meanwhile, Alesi was handed the chance to drive for KCMG on both days of the test as he auditioned to take over the seat that should have been occupied by Kalle Rovanpera before the Finn’s last-minute withdrawal.
The son of ex-Formula 1 racer Jean Alesi, who last raced in Super Formula in 2023 before being ejected from his TOM’S drive mid-season, ended up 25th and last overall with a best time of 1m24.012s, which was 1.651 seconds off the pace.
Alesi spent time in both KCMG cars as he first drove Kenta Yamashita’s regular #8 car in the first session before switching across to the #9, which has been driven this year by Seita Nonaka in the absence of Rovanpera, for the remainder of the test.
Yamashita was 14th-fastest in the #8, having sampled the Hitech-operated #9 car on Tuesday morning.
The other driver change of note for the test concerned B-Max Racing, which elected to install Super Formula Lights driver Evan Giltaire for a single session on Wednesday morning as part of an evaluation for a potential 2027 race seat.
Giltaire, who sits third in the Lights standings with three wins to his name, turned heads with the fifth-fastest time in that session, before the team’s regular driver Yuto Nomura returned to the cockpit, going 12th-fastest in the afternoon.
Super Formula returns to Fuji on July 17-19 for its next races, including a Sunday morning sprint race that replaces the cancelled Autopolis round in April.
Nonaka is expected to race the #9 KCMG car for the sprint as he qualified it at Autopolis, and the rules do not permit driver changes after qualifying.
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