Toyota WEC stars conclude Super Formula season on low note

Team Impul’s Hirakawa could manage no better than sixth in the final race of the 2023 campaign, after qualifying ninth and then spending the first half of the race stuck behind the slower KCMG machine of Yuji Kunimoto.

Post-race, Hirakawa said he was baffled by his lack of one-lap pace after a relatively strong showing in qualifying for Saturday’s first race, when he was second-fastest in his Q1 group.

His chances of progress were then further hampered by an issue with the gear shift indicator lights on his steering wheel while the Overtake System (OTS) was active.

“We have no idea what happened in qualifying,” Hirakawa told Motorsport.com. “[On Saturday] I had a good qualifying, I made a mistake in Q2 and I missed a chance for the front row, but [on Sunday] my lap in Q2 felt ok, but the gap was one second…

“In the race, the pace itself was good, but the team made a mistake setting up the shift lights for the OTS. I think they changed something within Toyota, but the team didn’t realise.

“At first I thought the OTS was broken. It took me 15 or 20 laps to work out that the lights were wrong. I tried to catch up after that, but I lost too much time in the beginning, I used too many seconds of OTS and I didn’t have enough for the end.”

Hirakawa ended up fifth in the standings in what could well be his final year in Super Formula for the foreseeable future, as his new McLaren Formula 1 reserve role means it is likely he will step away from the Japanese series next year.

The 29-year-old admitted to frustration that the Impul team could never fully get on top of this year’s SF23 package, especially over a single lap.

“I’m disappointed about this year,” said Hirakawa. “We tried everything to find how to manage this new car and the new tyres, but we never could. The good point was that the race pace was always good, but qualifying, we just had zero ideas. 

“Even my team-mate [Yuhi Sekiguchi] didn’t score any points. It’s been a bad year for the team.”

Kobayashi claims no decision made on future

Kobayashi’s 2023 season concluded with a lowly 17th-place finish, which followed the KCMG driver stalling in the pits and dropping virtually to the back of the field.

Combined with eighth place in the shortened first race of the Suzuka weekend, it left the ex-Formula 1 driver 11th in the final standings – an improvement on his dismal 2022 season but still far away from his career best ranking of sixth.

“Things just didn’t go well at all,” said Kobayashi. “The final race looked quite promising but it didn’t turn out that way. It was a weekend where nothing went our way.

“To be honest, it’s been a tough season. I really thought we could do more.”

After the previous round at Motegi, where a pitstop mistake by his KCMG team cost him a chance of a long-awaited first victory, Kobayashi made comments implying he would most likely call time on his Super Formula career at the end of the year.

Asked at Suzuka if he had given any further thought to the matter, Kobayashi claimed that a final decision on his was still to be made.

“I haven’t thought about it deeply yet,” said Kobayashi. “But honestly, for a team like ours, there are hardly any chances to win. The top teams are always winning, and there’s almost no chance for us. If we don’t take our chances when they come, we will never win.

“It would be nice to win at least once. I’d like to be able to dispel the question of why I can’t win in Super Formula even though I won in so many other categories.”

Hirakawa and Kobayashi now head to Bahrain, where they will battle it out for the WEC drivers’ title with their respective Toyota crews in Saturday’s eight-hour finale.

Additional reporting by Kenichiro Ebii

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