2022 Super Formula Championship

The 2022 Japanese Super Formula Championship will be the fiftieth season of premier Japanese open-wheel motor racing,^[1] and the tenth under the moniker of Super Formula. It is currently scheduled to start in April 2022 and is due to be contested over ten rounds across seven race meetings. Tomoki Nojiri will be the defending series champion.

Teams and drivers[]

Entrant	Engine	No.	Driver name
Team Mugen[2][3]	Honda	1	Tomoki Nojiri[2]
		15	Ukyo Sasahara[3]
Docomo Team Dandelion Racing		5	Tadasuke Makino[2]
		6	Hiroki Otsu[2]
ThreeBond Drago Corse		12	Nirei Fukuzumi[2]
B-Max Racing		50	Nobuharu Matsushita[2]
Team Goh[4]		53	Ren Sato[2]
		55	Atsushi Miyake[5]
TCS Nakajima Racing		64	Naoki Yamamoto[2]
		65	Toshiki Oyu[2]
Kondō Racing	Toyota	3	Kenta Yamashita[6]
		4	Sacha Fenestraz[6]
KCMG		7	Kamui Kobayashi[6]
		18	Yuji Kunimoto[6]
docomo business ROOKIE		14	Kazuya Oshima[6]
Carenex Team Impul		19	Yuhi Sekiguchi[6]
		20	Ryo Hirakawa[6]
Kuo Vantelin Team TOM’S		36	Giuliano Alesi[6]
		37	Ritomo Miyata[6]
P.mu/Cerumo・INGING		38	Sho Tsuboi[6]
		39	Sena Sakaguchi[6]

Team Changes[]

• Team Goh, who partnered with Mugen to run the number 15 Red Bull sponsored car in 2021, will operate as an independent two-car team with Honda engines. The team will be operated by Servus Japan, a racing engineering outfit best known for operating Autobacs Racing Team Aguri (ARTA) in Super GT.^[4]
• B-Max Racing planned to enter just two cars, after running just one car for Nobuharu Matsushita in 2021. They confirmed on 4 March that they will continue to run one car, after a failed attempt to enter a non-Japanese driver in their second car.^[7]

Driver changes[]

• Giuliano Alesi will compete full time with Kuo Vantelin Team TOM’S, replacing the retired two-time series champion Kazuki Nakajima. Alesi had replaced Nakajima for five rounds in 2021, and finished runner-up in the Super Formula Lights Championship.
• 2021 Super Formula Championship runner-up Nirei Fukuzumi will move to ThreeBond Drago Corse, replacing Tatiana Calderon, who departs the series after making nine starts in the last two seasons.
• Hiroki Otsu, 2021 Rookie of the Year recipient and race winner with Red Bull Mugen Team Goh, will fill the Dandelion Racing seat vacated by Fukuzumi.
• Ren Sato, who finished third in Super Formula Lights, was promoted to Super Formula as one of Team Goh's two drivers for 2022, with sponsorship from Red Bull. Atsushi Miyake, who finished fourth in Super Formula Lights, was later confirmed for the second Team Goh entry.
• Ukyo Sasahara, who substituted for Tadasuke Makino in two rounds last season, joined Team Mugen full-time with sponsorship from Bingo (BH Auction).^[3]

Race calendar[]

The provisional calendar was announced on 6 August 2021.^[8] On 31 January, it was announced that three of the race meetings will be double-header rounds, consisting of two races per weekend: The opening weekend at Fuji Speedway in April, the mid-August weekend at Mobility Resort Motegi, and the season-ending JAF Grand Prix Suzuka.^[9]

Regulation changes[]

As a measure to help reduce the amount of tyre usage, qualifying will now consist of two phases of knockout qualifying, Q1 and Q2, instead of three phases.^[10] The field will be split into two groups for Q1, and the fastest six drivers from each Q1 group will advance to Q2.^[11]

For single race meetings, there will be a 90 minute free practice session held on Saturday prior to qualifying, and then a 30 minute free practice session before the race. For double-header weekends, there will be a single 90 minute free practice session on Friday, and two separate qualifying sessions in the morning to set the grid for each afternoon's race.^[9]

Points scored in all races will now count towards the final championship standings. In 2020 and 2021, only the top five out of seven scores were counted towards the championship.^[12]

References[]

External links[]

• Japanese Championship Super Formula official website (in English)