While the rain had stopped falling before the qualifying on Saturday the circuit remained semi-wet when all the cars chose slick tyres. Showing his pace right from the start of his timed attack INGING driver Robert Streit took his second pole of the season.

　Falling slightly short of Streit’s 2’07.623 Kodai Tsukakoshi of Honda Team Real also set 2’07s level. They were followed by Kazuya Oshima (TOM’S), Marco Asmer (ThreeBond), Takuya Izawa (Honda Team Real) and Hiroaki Ishiura (TOM’S), who all did 2’09s. Apparently, the two drivers who would start from the front row, took full advantage of the road surface drying up rapidly. The other TOM’S driver Oliver Jarvis secured only ninth after suffering spinning off the track.
　The formation lap for the ninth round started at 4pm on Saturday. Still with some half-dry patches out there the track was almost dry. Streit got a good start. Oshima’s flying start pushed him to move into second ahead of Tsukakoshi, who just made a passable start.

　Streit, Oshima, Tsukakoshi, Asmer, Izawa and Ishiura completed the first lap in this order. In the early stages the top three drivers pulled away from Asmer, who was struggling with his strong understeer, but the closing stages turned into a head-to-head fight by tenths of second between Streit and Oshima after Tsukakoshi dropped out of contention by the closing stages. “I began to lose control and could not set stable laptimes”, explained Tsukakoshi.

　In the first corner on lap seven Oshima tried to make inroads as he recovered his balance from a slip, but Streit blocked him from the outside. The Brazilian ended up leading the field throughout the 12-lap race to claim third victory of the year, with Oshima second and Tsukakoshi third quickest. “It was a very tough race. I concentrated on retaining my lead over Oshima. I would like to thank the team for getting me a good machine”, he said. “All I could do was keep up with Streit”, admitted Oshima.

　Starting from ninth on the grid Jarvis stuck it out to finish forth. “The qualifying result was costly,” said the Brit. Hironobu Yasuda defeated his teammate Asmer to finish fifth, which was his personal best.

● Round9/10「Suzuka」Result