About 18 hours after the qualifying for the 3rd round the formation lap for the 4th round started at 9:45 am on Sunday at lower ambient and road surface temperature. Inging racer Robert Streit sat on pole, ahead of Tom’s trio of Kazuya Oshima, Hiroaki Ishiura and Oliver Jarvis, Kodai Tsukakoshi (Honda Team Real), and ThreeBond duo Marko Asmer and Hironobu Yasuda.

　Streit made a reasonable start to enter the corner one. “I made a mistake in the choice of the gear ratio for the start yesterday, so I just wanted to make a good getaway with the best and right gear choice today,” he said. In contrast Oshima had a wheelspin to drop to 5th. Ishiura moved past Jarvis at corner 2 into second place. Yasuda placed 4th. Oshima hunted down Yasuda to place 4th with superb braking technique into the chicane on lap 2, but he was not fast enough to catch up with the 3rd placed Jarvis. “The condition changed halfway through the 17 lap race, reversing the fast and slow areas on the track,” he said. The top 2 drivers kept about 1 second lead over their challengers respectively. Asmer had a hard charge from Tsukakoshi but still held onto 6th.

　While Jarvis made a mistake at the spoon curve with 3 laps remaining, reducing his lead over Oshima the top 4 runners kept their spots home. Yasuda had seemed to finish 5th quickest but after slowing down on lap 16 due to a fuel system failure he dropped to 9th. Asmer and Tsukakoshi took the chequered flag 5th and 6th quickest respectively.

“In order to save tyres I got more downforce than yesterday. That helped me keep my pace all the way,” said Strait. “I am happy about the good getaway, too.”

“I kept up with Streit waiting for an opportunity, but unfortunately I never found any chance,” said Ishiura. “It was very regrettable to have been overtaken by Ishiura at the start,” said Jarvis.

　We will move on to the next round at Twin Ring Motegi.

● Round3/4「Suzuka」Result