Hiroaki Ishiura (Tom’s) took pole on the trot on Saturday afternoon. Oliver Jarvis, Roberto Streit, Kodai Tsukakoshi, Yuhi Sekiguchi, Takuya Izawa and the duo of ThreeBond drivers dominated the front grid for the 8th round. While Ishiura triumphed race one, which was pretty uneventful, the weather brought about full of unpredictable proceedings in the 8th round.

It suddenly started raining just 10 minutes before the getaway at 0:20 p.m. Every team opted to go with rain tyres for the sighting lap, but they all lined up on the grid with slicks when they found the circuit not as wet as expected.

Many of the teams fine tuned their set-ups on the grid as the rain became heavier, and the race got off to a safety car start. On the first lap Streit made a pit stop to change tyres as the rain got even heavier. Many followed him on lap 2 and 3, whilst Tsukakoshi and Kazuya Oshima remained the field on slicks. With Tsukakoshi, Strait who moved up to second after his early pit stop strategy, Oshima, Hironobu Yasuda, Takuya Izawa, Marko Asmer, in that order, at the front of the field a full-scale race began at the end of lap 5 when the rain slowed although there were still some wet patches on the track. The conditions overwhelmingly favorable for the rain tyres soon helped Streit move past Tsukakoshi up to the top on lap 1. Izawa moved up to 2nd after the flying start, ahead of Tsukakoshi, Yasuda, Sekiguchi and Jarvis. Slick-shod Oshima dropped to 9th.

The situation seemed to remain advantageous to the rain-shod cars, but by the 9th lap the rain stopped and the circuit dried at once as the sun started to shine. On lap 10 both Tsukakoshi and Oshima running 7th and 8th respectively set faster lap times than the front-runner Streit for the first time. Now that nobody could stop the slick cars Tsukakoshi finally passed Streit at Atwood Curve on lap 15, and Oshima also moved into 2nd on lap 17. Streit slowed down as he got on the kerb due to an ignition trouble. “That lost the balance of the engine,” he said. Eluding onslaught of Jarvis Izawa was catching up with Streit, but was not fast enough to overtake him.

Tsukakoshi took his first win of the season, and in fact, did deliver the first ever win to Honda Team Real. “Mr. Tanaka (team manager) told me to stay with slicks. His decision was just right,” said Tsukakoshi. “I am very happy that I was able to reward all the efforts the team has made for me.” Oshima placed 2nd, ahead of Streit, Izawa, Jarvis and Sekiguchi. “The fluff in the qualifying made me hold onto slicks. If I had scored a reasonable place in the qualifying I’d have switched to rain tyres, so I just got lucky,” said Oshima.

● Round7/8「Okayama」Result