TOPICS
Kaylen Frederic snatches his maiden SFL win from Shun Koide
Kaylen Frederick（Pilot ONE Racing with B-MAX）
The 2024 Japanese Super Formula Lights’ fifth event finally reached its final day when Rd 14 race was fought for 18 laps from 9am Sunday.
While it was not under 1m22 secs as the track conditions were not as good as Rd 13 Shun Koide in HFDP WITH B-MAX RACING secured another pole position in the qualifying that started 10:30am on Saturday with a time of 1m22.122, 0.261 secs faster than second qualified Kaylen Frederick (Pilot ONE Racing with B-MAX).
Rikuto Kobayashi (Mobility Chukyo TOM’S 320 TGR-DC) was third for the second time in a row. Yuga Furutani (Deloitte. HTP TOM’S 320) made up some places to start from fourth on the grid.
Seita Nonaka (PONOS Racing TOM’S 320 TGR-DC) would start from fifth.
Start of Round.14■Turbulent opening lap with SC deployment
Unlike the previous round in the blistering heat Okayama International Circuit was wet with drizzle early Sunday morning, so rain tyres seemed like a logical choice. However, it had stopped raining and the sun had started to shine before the cars came out of the pits at 8:40am.
With the wind blowing and the track quickly changing from wet to half-wet all cars actually opted for slick tyres.
Even so, the conditions were still so tricky for slicks that each car more or less suffered wheelspin at the start.
Koide managed to make a good start from pole to retain the lead heading into the first corner ahead of Frederick, Kobayashi and Nonaka.
He firmly defended his lead through the opening bends but at the exit of Attwood he slightly dropped off the pace due to a throttle failure. Frederick reacted quickly to get alongside Koide and dived down the inside of his team-mate at the hairpin to get ahead just before the safety car was called following a crash.
It occurred at the inside of Moss “S” where Nobuhiro Imada (JMS RACING TEAM) – who had got a stunning start from the back of the grid to grab master-class lead from Yasuhiro Shimizu (GNSY 324) – lost his balance and Shimizu came along and was unable to avoid Imada.
The race restarted on lap five with Frederick still leading Koide, while Nonaka closed right on to the tail of Kobayashi in third, and moved to the inside of his team-mate at Attwood, only for the two to collide and go off into the gravel, bringing out the safety car once again as neither of them was unable to escape.
Kaylen Frederick（Pilot ONE Racing with B-MAX）
■Frederick fends off a late-charging Koide
At the second restart on lap nine Frederick pulled away to open up his lead, and Koide now came under pressure from Furutani.
A little back, a four-way close battle over fourth position was fought by a pack with Jin Nakamura (Mobility Chukyo TOM’S 320 TGR-DC) leading Reimei Ito (LMcorsa OTG 320), Souta Arao (HFDP WITH TODA RACING) and Rin Arakawa (B-MAX RACING 324).
In the closing stages Koide went on a superb late charge to cut the gap to Frederick, while setting the fastest lap of the race, but Frederick kept pushing to take the chequered flag after 17 laps as the 30 minutes time limit was reached before completing 18 laps due to two SC periods to snatch his maiden SFL win.
Koide failed to snatch back the lead, but extended his championship lead as Nonaka retired.
Furutani marked his first podium finish in third since Rd 10 Fuji.
The furious battle over fourth was won by Nakamura. Arao passed Ito on lap 15 to finish fifth. Ito scored his first SFL points finish in sixth.
In the turbulent master class DRAON (TEAM DRAGON 324) made it back-to-back wins in an error-free manner with a huge lead over Makoto Fujiwara (TEAM DRAGON 324).
