May 24, 2015
Rd. 7 Okayama

◎ Yamashita revenges his defeat in Rd 6 to claim third win
　 F3-N: Ogawa sweeps two-race Okayama event with lights-to-flag

Rd 7 of the 2015 Japanese Formula 3 championship began with a duel for pole position between the PETRONAS TOM'S pair. While Nick Cassidy took pole for Rd 6 with a new course record Kenta Yamashita spent 10 minutes to make further adjustments on the car and revenged himself to take pole for Rd 7 on his last attack with 1m22.049, 0.018s faster than his team-mate, who settled for the second grid. "(Kenta did well.) Still, I hold the course record," said Cassidy in a relaxed mode, "anyway, I am happy that the team hogged the front row in succession." The lineup of the second row on the grid was also the same as the previous qualifying with Mitsunori Takaboshi of B-Max Racing team with NDDP in third and Nirei Fukuzumi of HFDP RACING in fourth positions.
In F3-N class Ryo Ogawa of TOM'S took his fifth pole position. Ai Miura placed second with about a second faster than the time that she set in the qualifying for Rd 6 ahead of DRAGON of B-Max Racing team. "A change of my driving style significantly improved the times," said the EXEDY RACING TEAM driver.

● First PETRONAS TOM'S 1-2 since Rd 3

The race started on time at 12:50 p.m. on Sunday. In contrast to the unexpected stall in Rd 6 Yamashita got a good start from pole and leapt into the first corner with Cassidy behind him. The formation of PETRONAS TOM'S 1-2 was maintained throughout the race. Having started fifth on the grid Ordonez snatched third place from Takaboshi, but Takaboshi couldn't afford to allow the Spaniard again to beat him, and regained the spot on the back stretch.

In the meantime the two leaders were building their margin up to 1.6 seconds over Takaboshi at the end of the opening lap. Once posted 1m24.779 on lap 3 Yamashita continued to lap with 1m24s level, setting the fastest lap of 1m24.265 on lap 7. In a similar but a bit slower pace of 1m24s Cassidy was gradually lagging behind as the race went on. On lap 13, however, Cassidy closed the gap to 0.9 seconds due to a jam caused by drivers lagging behind on single-lap pace, but Yamashita handled it in a controlled manner and immediately pulled away again to claim his third win of the season without once conceding the lead. "It was only on that lap when I felt pressed," Yamashita revealed. Second-placed Cassidy kept his championship lead.
Another eye-catcher in early laps was a battle for fifth place between Keishi Ishikawa and Fukuzumi, with the latter, challenging with 0.1 to 0.2 seconds faster times the inside of Ishikawa at the end of the back straight on lap 11 and having a contact before sending the TODA RACING racer into spin and retirement for the two consecutive races. Without being affected by this Fukuzumi went on to close in on Ordonez. A scrap for third position was fought into closing laps among Fukuzumi, Ordonez and Takaboshi, with these three being not able to reduce each gap any further than one second or so, ending up Takaboshi holding on to the bottom of the podium ahead of Ordonez and Fukuzumi.

● Ogawa continues to extend his lead to stretch his
　 winning streak to four

In F3-N class Ogawa got a good start from pole position while DRAGON got ahead of Ai Miura at the start of the race but a close battle on the opening lap saw him lose control out of the Piper and go off the track. He managed to recover but ran wide at the second hairpin through another battle with Miura, allowing her to regain the second position. With excellent pace that he had showed since the practice sessions on Friday, however, DRAGON launched hard-charging from the tail of the field and moved up to third place at the hairpin on lap 8 after overtaking Masaru Miura, but again was forced to resume his work from the tail of the filed as he was handed down a drive-through penalty, bringing Masaru Miura back to third, with the CMS driver, however, suffering a spin and retirement at the first corner on lap 18. As such, F3-N class saw fast changing in order for third place and eventually resulted in DRAGON securing the place behind Ai Miura.
Never being distracted by the chaos behind him Ogawa was alone with constant pace and cruised to victory by an outstanding lead to mark his fifth win of the season. Ai Miura revenged her retirement in the previous race to finish second, but this Okayama race weekend seemed to remind her of the Ogawa's high performance.