June 25, 2017 Rd. 11 Suzuka

Tsuboi holds on for back-to-back win
DRAGON claims sixth F3-N win of the season

Winner of Japanese Formula3 Round 10 Sho Tsuboi and his director Masanori Sekiya.

Start of Round 11

The rain that started to fall last night let up early Sunday morning but the track for Japanese Formula 3 Rd 11 race was left wet except the for record line.
The Rd 10 pole-sitter and race winner Sho Tsuboi (in Corolla Chukyo Kuo TOM’S F317) would once again start from pole on the grid for Rd 11 determined by second best time of each driver in the qualifying on Saturday, with his team-mate Ritomo Miyata (Corolla Chukyo Kuo TOM’S F314) as another front-row sitter. Takaboshi (B-MAX NDDP F3) would start one place higher from third.
Similarly in F3-N DRAGON had secured pole position for Rd 10 and Rd 11

■Tsuboi wins a 3-way contention

Sho Tsuboi（Collora Chukyo Kuo TOM'S F317）

As the lights went out at 10:10 am Tsuboi kept his lead into the first corner, while Miyata bogged down in the wet inside of the front row, allowing Takaboshi and Alex Palou (THREEBOND) to get past him.
The race would see an incident as early as on the opening lap when Sena Sakaguchi (HFDP RACING F316) had a contact at the Hitachi Automotive Systems chicane with Hongli Ye (KRC with B-MAX F315) running in sixth after Hiroki Otsu (TODA FIGHTEX), forcing Ye to spin and Sakaguchi himself to pit because of a damage on the front of his machine. The HFDP was given a drive-thru as a result.

On lap two Palou grabbed second spot from Takaboshi at turn one with a pass reminiscent of the previous round. A leading pack formed by Tsuboi, Palou, Takaboshi, Miyata and Otsu in this order would gradually be narrowed down to the lead three into the halfway stage with roughly a second gap with each other.

Palou overtaking Takaboshi.

The closing stages would see no drama in the 3-way contention for victory, and Tsuboi ended up maintaining his lead from lights to flag, making it back-to-back win. “I was able to extend my lead early on, but Alex (Palou) had a good pace from midway point,” said Tsuboi. “So, I kept cool to concentrate on controlling my pace.”
Takaboshi finished third ahead of Miyata. Otsu spent much of the race in a lonely fifth. Yoshiaki Katayama (OIRC F315) won a battle with Bruno Carneiro (AlbirexRT-WILSON) and Ai Miura (EXEDY B-Max F317) to score his first point in sixth since Rd 5 Okayama after passing the Albirex on lap ten.

■ F3-N: DRAGON keeps his lead in the point standings with a dominant victory

DRAGON（B-Max Racing F306）

With a pretty good form over this Suzuka weekend DRAGON quickly recovered his position from a slow start, completing the opening lap at the front of F3-N with Masayuki Ueda (Rn Yamashita Seisakusho F308) in second and Ryoya Hasegawa (Alb Niigata Daiichi Hotel Sugar) in third. These lead three would gradually extend each margin, enjoying a solitary drive in the closing stages.
The B-Max driver would not be unchallenged thereafter to lead home 6.148 sec clear of Ueda and claim his sixth win of the season with full marks as well as extending his lead in the F3-N standings, the result that he failed to achieve in Rd 10 where Alex Yang (HuaJiangHU F3) set the fastest lap.
Ueda finished second ahead of Hasegawa.

Result & Entry List PDF