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Another Win for Nakayama
Chiyo Scores His Second Podium Finish
Takaboshi Secures A Hard Fought Win over Indra-Payoong in F3-N Class

   The starting grid for Rd 5 was determined by the results of Rd 3, which means the PETRONAS TEAM TOM’S drivers Yuichi Nakayama and Takamoto Katsuta dominated the front row of the starting grid for the race with Nakayama as a pole-sitter. Tomoki Nojiri of TODA RACING and Katsumasa Chiyo of B-Max Engineering completed the second row, and the HFDP RACING duo, Nobuharu Matsushita and Shota Kiyohara started from the third row.
   Mitsunori Takaboshi of NDDP RACING sat at the top of the F3-N class, followed by Nanin Indra-Payoong of TOM’S SPIRIT and Ryosuke Takehira of KCMG.
   The sun began to set when the race started in much cooler road conditions with air temperature of 21 degrees C and road surface temperature of 34 degrees C.
   “I got a better start and acceleration than in this morning’s previous race,” said Nakayama, who picked up the holeshot into the first corner well ahead of his fellow driver. Chiyo made one place and completed the opening lap nose-to-tail with the leaders, but a lap later he dropped out of the front. The early stages saw better lap times overall than in the previous round because every car was on new tyres, and among them all the two Tom’s drivers were especially outstanding, setting 1.45s level.
   The battle between Nakayama and Katsuta ended before long, though, when Katsuta began to fall behind and Nakayama moved into a solid lead. Chiyo, who had switched from paddle shift affected by the electric problem during the Rd 4 to sequential shift, was not really able to pick up the pace, allowing the group disputing the 4th place to close in.
   When it comes to the group, Kiyohara passed Matsushita to place 5th on lap 2, and Nojiri suddenly slowed down on lap 7. “The pit-lane switch suddenly turned on,” revealed the Toda driver, who immediately recovered himself but let Kiyohara and Matsushita get ahead of him.
   Contrary to people’s expectation Nakayama slowed down in the closing stages to 1.46s level. “Something was wrong with the clutch.” However, Katsuta simply reduced the gap and Nakayama managed to fend off his team mate. “Building up such a huge lead in the early stages helped me hold on to the top,” he smiled. Katsuta finished 2nd again, bringing the Tom’s pair 5 consecutive 1-2 finishes from the beginning. Having his right hand scraped Chiyo managed to hold the 3rd position, scoring his first podium finish since the second round.
   In the F3-N class Takaboshi got a good start from the lead while another good starter Takehira grabbed the lead out of turn 5, but was immediately outpaced on S-shape corner by the KCM driver, and then overtaken by Indra-Payoong on 90 degrees corner on lap 2. In the meantime, Takaboshi pulled away to open up the lead up to over 3 second into lap 3, but due to the car being out of balance the lead was not as big as he built in the previous race. Closed to within 0.9s by the second lead, Takaboshi squeaked to his 5 consecutive victories. Takehira looked so happy having completed his F3 debut weekend with all podium finishes.

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