The 2022 Japanese Super Formula Championship was the fiftieth season of premier Japanese open-wheel motor racing, and the tenth under the moniker of Super Formula. It started in April 2022 and was contested over ten rounds across seven race meetings.
Tomoki Nojiri defended his championship title at the penultimate race, the first back-to-back series champion since Tsugio Matsuda in 2007 and 2008. His team, Team Mugen, was also crowned teams' champion after the same race, for the first time in its competition history.
Teams and drivers Every Honda-powered car used a Honda HR-414E engine and every Toyota-powered car used a Toyota RI4A engine. Team Engine No. Driver nameRounds Team Mugen Honda 1 Tomoki Nojiri All 15 Ukyo Sasahara All Kondo Racing Toyota 3 Kenta Yamashita All 4 Sacha Fenestraz All Docomo Team Dandelion Racing Honda 5 Tadasuke Makino All 6 Hiroki Otsu All KCMG Toyota 7 Kamui Kobayashi All 18 Yuji Kunimoto All ThreeBond Drago Corse Honda 12 Nirei Fukuzumi All docomo business ROOKIE Toyota 14 Kazuya Oshima All Carenex Team Impul Toyota 19 Yuhi Sekiguchi All 20 Ryo Hirakawa All Kuo Vantelin Team TOM’S Toyota 36 Giuliano Alesi All 37 Ritomo Miyata All P.mu/Cerumo・INGING Toyota 38 Sho Tsuboi All 39 Sena Sakaguchi All B-Max Racing Honda 50 Nobuharu Matsushita All Team Goh Honda 53 Ren Sato All 55 Atsushi Miyake All TCS Nakajima Racing Honda 64 Naoki Yamamoto All 65 Toshiki Oyu All
Team changes Rookie Racing has new sponsor from docomo business, the team be named as docomo business ROOKIE. KCMG ended their title sponsorship with car audio brand carrozzeria after four season. Team Goh, who partnered with Mugen to run the number 15 Red Bull sponsored car in 2021, now operated as an independent two-car team with Honda engines. The team was operated by Servus Japan, a racing engineering outfit best known for operating Autobacs Racing Team Aguri (ARTA) in Super GT. B-Max Racing planned to enter two cars, after running just one car for Nobuharu Matsushita in 2021. They confirmed on 4 March that they would continue to run one car, after a failed attempt to enter a non-Japanese driver in their second car, as 2021 Formula Regional Americas Championship champion Kyffin Simpson declined the opportunity offered by Honda Performance Development (Honda's United States motorsport operation, which supplies engines to the Formula 4 United States and Formula Regional Americas championships) to the series champion because of pandemic-related restrictions. With the initial plan to enter one car for the season, Team Mugen reverted to run two cars this season, with the second car leased from B-Max Racing who originally planned to enter two cars.
Driver changes Giuliano Alesi competed full time with Kuo Vantelin Team TOM’S, replacing the retired two-time series champion Kazuki Nakajima who retired from motorsport to take the role of vice-chairman at Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe. Alesi had replaced Nakajima for five rounds in 2021, and finished runner-up in the Super Formula Lights Championship. 2021 Super Formula Championship runner-up Nirei Fukuzumi moved to ThreeBond Drago Corse, replacing Tatiana Calderon, who departed the series after making nine starts in the last two seasons. Hiroki Otsu, 2021 Rookie of the Year recipient and race winner with Red Bull Mugen Team Goh, filled the Dandelion Racing seat vacated by Fukuzumi. Ren Sato, who finished third in Super Formula Lights, was promoted to Super Formula as one of Team Goh's two drivers for 2022 after also being recruited as a Red Bull Junior Team driver. Atsushi Miyake, who finished fourth in Super Formula Lights, was later confirmed for the second Team Goh entry. Ukyo Sasahara, who substituted for Tadasuke Makino in two rounds last season, joined Team Mugen full-time with sponsorship from Bingo (BH Auction).
Race calendar The provisional calendar was announced on 6 August 2021. On 31 January, it was announced that three of the race meetings would be double-header rounds, consisting of two races per weekend: The opening weekend at Fuji Speedway in April, the mid-August weekend at Mobility Resort Motegi, and the season-ending JAF Grand Prix at Suzuka. Round Circuit Location Date 1 Fuji Speedway Oyama, Shizuoka 9 April 2 10 April 3 Suzuka International Racing Course Suzuka, Mie 24 April 4 Autopolis Hita, Oita 22 May 5 Sportsland SUGO Shibata, Miyagi 19 June 6 Fuji Speedway Oyama, Shizuoka 17 July 7 Mobility Resort Motegi Motegi, Tochigi 20 August 8 21 August 9 Suzuka International Racing Course Suzuka, Mie 29 October 10 30 October
Regulation changes As a measure to help reduce the amount of tyre usage, qualifying now consisted of two phases of knockout qualifying, Q1 and Q2, instead of three phases. The field was split into two groups for Q1, and the fastest six drivers from each Q1 group advanced to Q2.
For single race meetings, there was a 90-minute free practice session held on Saturday prior to qualifying, and then a 30-minute free practice session before the race. For double-header weekends, there was a single 90 minute free practice session on Friday, and two separate qualifying sessions in the morning to set the grid for each afternoon's race.
Points scored in all races now counted towards the final championship standings. In 2020 and 2021, only the top five out of seven scores were counted towards the championship.
Results Round Circuit Pole Position Fastest Lap Winning driver Winning team 1 Fuji Speedway Ukyo Sasahara Ryo Hirakawa Ryo Hirakawa Carenex Team Impul 2 Tomoki Nojiri Yuhi Sekiguchi Tomoki Nojiri Team Mugen 3 Suzuka International Racing Course Tomoki Nojiri Tomoki Nojiri Nobuharu Matsushita B-Max Racing 4 Autopolis Tomoki Nojiri Atsushi Miyake Ryo Hirakawa Carenex Team Impul 5 Sportsland SUGO Tomoki Nojiri Yuhi Sekiguchi Sacha Fenestraz Kondo Racing 6 Fuji Speedway Yuhi Sekiguchi Toshiki Oyu Ukyo Sasahara Team Mugen 7 Mobility Resort Motegi Naoki Yamamoto Naoki Yamamoto Naoki Yamamoto TCS Nakajima Racing 8 Toshiki Oyu Kazuya Oshima Yuhi Sekiguchi Carenex Team Impul 9 Suzuka International Racing Course Tomoki Nojiri Ritomo Miyata Ukyo Sasahara Team Mugen 10 Tomoki Nojiri Ren Sato Tomoki Nojiri Team Mugen
Season summary
First half The opening round at Fuji Speedway in early April began with Ukyo Sasahara taking a surprise maiden pole in qualifying, ahead of Ren Sato. Both front row starters had bad luck, though, with Sasahara stalling and Sato getting spun around by Hiroki Otsu. This handed Ryo Hirakawa the lead, ahead of Sacha Fenestraz, and the pair soon started fighting, with both leading the race at times. Hirakawa was in the lead by the time he pitted on lap 25 and came out in second behind Tomoki Nojiri, who had pitted earlier. He used his fresher tires to close up to the leader, and was able to get by Nojiri around the outside of turn 13 on lap 30. Hirakawa then went on to win the race. Fenestraz was unable to follow Hirakawa through, so he had to be content with third place.
The second race of the Fuji double-header saw Nojiri claim his eighth career pole in qualifying. He led Ritomo Miyata at the start, while Sasahara in third stalled again. The safety car was called on lap one when Nobuharu Matsushita spun Tadasuke Makino around and ended his race. Fenestraz was eliminated from contention when he spun around after the restart. Stopping later was once again the better strategy: Hirakawa ran in fifth before stopping, and was able to undercut four cars by virtue of stopping later than them, on lap 24. Nojiri pitted another lap later, and was able to defend his lead on fresher tires. He led Hirakawa home, with the gap between the top two remaining fairly static in the final stages of the race. Miyata came home third to round out the podium. Nojiri left Fuji leading the championship, two points ahead of Hirakawa.
Suzuka hosted round three of the season, and Nojiri continued his qualifying form, grabbing pole again. He kept Kenta Yamashita behind at the start, who was unable to keep up the pace and got passed by Makino and Matshushita. In wet conditions, a pitstop was no longer mandatory, and most drivers elected to run the race on a single set of wet tires. Nojiri dominated most of the race, with Makino and Matsushita only closing up slowly. Four laps from the end, Matsushita made a decisive move on Makino and got second place. He had managed to keep his tires from overheating better than everyone around him, so he rapidly closed up to leader Nojiri, overtook him two laps later and claimed his maiden Super Formula win. Nojiri's second place still grew his championship lead to 16 points, as Hirakawa had a bad weekend and earned just four points.
Nojiri kept his one-lap pace at Autopolis, scoring his third pole in a row. Next to him, Miyata had a poor start, first getting passed by Makino and then accidentally sending Sasahara off track when defending. Hirakawa used this to his advantage, starting from eighth and climbing up to third by the time the safety car was deployed for a crashed Toshiki Oyu. Shortly after the restart, Hirakawa was able to move past Makino into second place, before another interruption, this time because of Kamui Kobayashi retiring with damage. When Nojiri then pitted on lap 16, Hirakawa elected to stay out, comfortably overcutting his rival. Nojiri was struggling with pace in his second stint, dropping back to fourth, behind Fenestraz and Atsushi Miyake. This saw his championship lead over Hirakawa cut down to seven points.
When the first half of the season came to a close at Sugo, Nojiri extended his pole position streak to four, with Hirakawa struggling again in qualifying. Fenestraz started second and moved past Nojiri at the start, before two early safety car periods for Yamashita and Matsushita caused differing strategies across the field. Most drivers took their mandatory pitstop early on during the second safety car, the leaders among them. Seven cars remained out to stop later, so the frontrunners risked getting held up by the slower of those cars, allowing those in front to build a gap and overcut them. The off-strategy group led by Miyata failed to build up a big enough gap, so Miyata ended up fifth after his stop, allowing Fenestraz to claim his maiden win ahead of Oyu and Nojiri. Hirakawa was only able to finish seventh, so Nojiri's lead now stood at 17 points.
Second half When the championship returned to Fuji in July, Yuhi Sekiguchi ended Nojiri's qualifying streak in a disrupted wet session. An eventful race saw Hirakawa and Miyake retiring after a battle with Oyu in the first turn, before Fenestraz suffered a heavy crash on lap two that triggered a safety car. Many drivers elected to stop early, Nojiri in second among them on lap ten. When race leader Sekiguchi came into the pits on lap 25, his left rear wheel was not fitted properly and it came off when he returned to the track. This prompted another safety car, advantaging those yet to stop. Sasahara stopped on lap 27 and came out in the lead, ahead of Sho Tsuboi, who was just able to hold off Nojiri. Sasahara claimed his maiden win from 13th on the grid. As Hirakawa and Fenestraz both retired, Nojiri was able to extend his championship lead to 29 points.