Palou keeps his lead to bear down Tsuboi DRAGON scores his third F3-N win of the season
Due to a rain front coming to eastern Japan Rd 6 qualifying and race of the 2017 Japanese F3 championship’s third event at Fuji Speedway took place on Saturday May 13 in wet conditions in contrast to a fine weather on Friday when a number of the teams scrubbed their wet tyres in practice sessions in preparation for the rain.
The 10-minute qualifying was started at 9:55 am with every machine on full wets. Mitsunori Takaboshi (in B-MAX NDDP F3) was the first driver to come out, and Alex Palou followed (THREEBOND). With these two and Sho Tsuboi (Corolla Chukyo Kuo TOM’S F317) posting good times Palou ultimately took a pole position with a time of 1m51.649, completing almost all of his runs at about a second faster pace. Tsuboi secured second place ahead of Takaboshi.
DRAGON (B-Max Racing F306) topped the times in F3-N with Ryoya Hasegawa (Alb Niigata Daiichi Hotel Sugar) in second and Masayuki Ueda (Rn Yamashita Seisakusho F308) in third.
■Battle betwee Palou and Tsuboi comes to an unforeseen end
 |
| Start of Japanese Formula 3 Round 6 |
Palou got away strongly as the race was started at 3:45 pm on time still in wet conditions but with lighter rain and the fog clearing while Tsuboi got a late start, allowing Tsuboi to make it through turn one in second place, but soon snatched the place as he dived down the inside of the B-MAX at Dunlop. At the end of the opening lap came Palou in front, Tsuboi, Takaboshi, Hiroki Otsu (TODA FIGHTEX) and Hongli Ye (KRC with B-Max F315) rounding out the top five.
In trying to escape away Palou immediately built up a 3.8 sec lead on lap two, which he would extend to 4.290 sec at the end of lap five. However, Tsuboi kept pace with the leader, even posting a better time of 1m50.436 on lap six.
 |
| Alex Palou（THREEBOND） |
As the race entered the halfway stages Tsuboi began to gradually narrow down the gap to Palou to 3.848 sec on lap eight and 3.459 sec on lap nine, and once the field saw some cars running a lap down on lap ten it would be further reduced. When Palou became bottled up at Coca Cola behind backmarkers on lap 12 Tsuboi did not miss the chance to close to within 0.6 sec of the race leader on lap 13. “I was no longer in a position to increase my pace as Tsuboi,” said Palou after the race.
Tsuboi swept up the inside of Palou into turn one on lap 14, but the latter defended the position on the outside and would even extend his lead by 0.3 sec a lap later. Although he would later deny any intention to overtake Tsuboi once again moved down the inside of Palou at turn one on the final lap, but only to outbrake himself and collide, forcing the ThreeBond out of the track before he span and damaged his front wing.
 |
| Sho Tsuboi (Collora Kuo Chukyo TOM’S F317） |
This accident lost Tsuboi’s downforce, allowing rapidly approaching Takaboshi to ease past for second. All he could do on the road was defend the third spot from Otsu. A 30-sec post-race time penalty would be handed down for forcing other driver off the track (ref. Article 15.1.2 of Japanese F3 Sporting Regulations), dropping Tsuboi down the order to eighth place.
Takaboshi took the chequered flag in second behind Palou, but would be excluded when it was discovered during scrutineering after the race that his B-MAX did not conform to Appendix J – Article 275 of FIA Technical Regulations (Control of the Intake System), promoting Otsu to second and Hongli Ye to third.
 |
| DRAGON and his advisor Daiki Sasaki |
■ DRAGON scores his third F3-N win of the season
At the start of the race F3-N saw the pole-sitter DRAGON find no place to cede the position to Masayuki Ueda (Rn Yamashita Seisakusho F308) – who would soon drop off the pace by “braking too early for the cars ahead, allowing the second-starting Hasegawa to take the lead.
DRAGON quickly set about charging followed by Katsuaki Kubota (Planex SmaCame F308), and snatched back the lead on lap three as Hasegawa spun, which he would extend thereafter in slippery conditions to as much as 8 seconds at the line, scoring his third win of the season.
Ueda completed the podium in third behind Hasegawa after regaining lost ground on lap seven. Having battled it out with Motoyoshi Yoshida (B-Max Racing F312) and SYUJI (B-Max Racing F306) Alex Yang (HuaJiangHU F3) finished in fifth behind Kubota.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Comments
