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Evan Giltaire wins tense top scrap to claim first SFL victory
Evan Giltaire（ART Grand Prix with B-MAX）
Japanese Super Formula Lights' Rd 2 kicked off with the formation lap at 9:45am on Sunday under clear spring weather.
On Saturday Kiyoshi Umegaki in Mobility Chukyo TOM’S TGR-DC SFL took pole position with 1m33.688 after topping the times in three FPs. Evan Giltaire (ART Grand Prix with B-MAX) was a close second qualifier with a time of 1m33.750. Third spot was secured by Tokiya Suzuki (Mobility Chukyo TOM’S TGR-DC2 SFL) who had a disappointing result in the season opener. Rd 1 winner Yusuke Mitsui (DELiGHTWORKS) qualified fourth.
Start of Round.2■Rd 2 also sees fierce battles early on
As the lights went out Mitsui made a good start from fourth and got ahead of Umegaki at TGR, but the two brushed and ran wide towards the outside as the pole-sitter locked up, allowing Giltaire to sweep up the inside to snatch the lead.
Mitsui and Umegaki played fierce battles, running side-by-side through several turns, with the DELiGHTWORKS driver prevailing to take second spot.
Suzuki lost places at the start but quickly set about catching up by taking advantage of his fresh rubber, regaining his third-place starting position on lap four after overtaking Umegaki at TGR.
Behind them were Kotaro Shimbara (HFDP WITH B-MAX RACING) and Akshay Bohra closely tailing Kazuhisa Urabe (DELiGHTWORKS) – who had moved from sixth to fourth on the opening lap, while further back, a three-way battle over seventh spot was being fought by Oscar Wurz (PONOS RACING TOM'S TGR-DC SF), Rintaro Sato (B-MAX ENGINEERING 324) and Kenta Kumagai (LMcorsa OTG 320).
On lap five the top three began to bunch up. Suzuki moved to the inside of Mitui at Panasonic on lap nine and overtook Mitsui at TGR on a lap later before setting his sights on the race leader Giltaire.
Evan Giltaire（ART Grand Prix with B-MAX）
■master class sees dramas in closing laps
Suzuki, however, was subsequently given a five-second time penalty after being shown a black-and-white flag at two occasions for violation of track limits. He nonetheless never let up in his pursuit of Giltaire until the end of the race to finish a close second on the road, and classified fifth place.
Giltaire stayed focused to claim his first SFL victory.
As it turned out, while the order was different the podium had the same line-up as in the opening race as Mitsui and Umegaki were promoted to second and third places respectively.
Urabe and Shimbara battled it out throughout the race, with Urabe taking fifth place.
Meanwhile, DRAGON (B-MAX RACING) took the master-class lead on the opening lap after KEN ALEX sustained damage on his BUZZ RACING and was forced to pit. However, the B-MAX driver who is set to compete certain races in the 2026 season was soon passed by Nobuhiro Imada (JMS RACING TEAM) who is also set to partially participate the series.
The two continued to play close fights including a daring dive from DRAGON at TGR on lap 13, ending up in a collision at Advan on lap 14 that gave damage to Imada's machine and force him to stop at 300R.
DRAGON finished first at the top of the class on the road, but was given a 10secs time penalty for the collision, ceding the victory to Yasuhito Shimizu (AR TASTE RACING 324) who drove a steady race.
