Fenestraz awarded victory in washed-out race

Sacha Fenestraz was declared the winner of Saturday’s Super Formula race at Fuji Speedway, which was abandoned after 14 laps amid poor weather conditions.

TOM’S driver Fenestraz claimed his second career win, and his first since returning to Super Formula at the start of the year, in a race that was red-flagged twice due to the amount of standing water and poor visibility on a day of persistent rain.

Fenestraz headed a 1-2 for Toyota flagship team TOM’S ahead of championship leader Sho Tsuboi, albeit only half-points were awarded as the required distance – 75 percent of the originally scheduled 36 laps – was not reached.

It marks the first TOM’S 1-2 since the opening race of 2015, when Andre Lotterer led Kazuki Nakajima.

TOM’S inherited a front-row lockout when Ayumu Iwasa, who had set the fastest time in Q2, had his lap times deleted for crashing at the 100R right-hander and bringing out the red flags.

The Team Mugen driver’s best lap of 1m33.196s had been enough to beat Fenestraz in Q2 by 0.771 seconds before it was scrubbed.

That initially put Iwasa back to 12th, but a penalty for an engine change meant the Red Bull Formula 1 reserve driver was sent to the back of the grid.

Iwasa elected to start from the pit lane as the race started behind the safety car, with the first red flag coming after just six laps without any green flag action.

After a delay of just over 30 minutes, the race was resumed as the visibility appeared to improve.

But soon after the resumption, the conditions worsened again and the race was red-flagged for a second time and then abandoned with the two-hour time limit looming.

Behind the two TOM’S drivers, Tomoki Nojiri was third in the second of the Mugen cars, ahead of Tadasuke Makino in the best of the Dandelion Racing drivers.

Kakunoshin Ohta was seventh in the second of the Dandelion cars behind Nakajima Racing’s Ren Sato and Toshiki Oyu for Inging.

Iwasa was eventually classified 21st after picking up one position when B-Max Racing’s Shun Koide pitted on lap two in order for his crew to remove what appeared to be his on-board camera’s cover from his cockpit.

It means Tsuboi, who earned 7.5 points for second place, now has an enhanced championship lead of 14.5 points over Iwasa with three races left to go this season, including Sunday’s second race at Fuji.

Results to follow

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