This kid is a full on fan! Comes to many races! Look at him! So cool! He has everything exactly like on my suit, even the puma logo! This is at Fuji but he comes to most of the races.

quick little report on my unfortunate result at Motegi:

Qualifying was very tight, car balance was good. In Q2 I was P2 but we were all within one tenth of a second so things looked tense for the Q3. In fact, very tense, I should have gone to the toilet before to get some weight off… I qualifyind 5th beeing 1,5 tenth behind pople position….

Race started well with passing 2 cars after the first turn. Things were looking good, I was running 3rd and keeping a good pace, specially with a lot of fuel we decided to carry to make a short pit-stop. Then on lap 4, everything stopped… My gearbox exploded and that was the bitter end…. This is going to make my life difficult for the title hunt but its all still possible so Im going for it! Max attack!

Some great shots from my friend Noriaki! simply the best!

sorry for the long break and not posting anything…. Its summer time so i don’t like to spend to much time behind the computer… I prefer to be at the beach or the pool… hehe

So… Since the Le Mans 24H race in june I had 3 races.

Super GT in Sepang, finishing a OK 8th. Not great but it was the best we could do with all the handicap weight on our car. Just disappointing when you can fight for victory…

Formula Nippon In Fuji, finishing 2nd. Was a good race in real hot conditions, Kohei hirate won it, he was clearly ahead of everybody so we need to work better for the next races. Championship Gap to the leader shrank down to 5 points which is good. Motegi is coming up in  1o days.

Super GT in Sugo. Finishing 7th, again, we have a heavy car but our performance shouldn’t be that poor, we are seriously lacking speed since we changed our engine in Sepang. For me it was one of the most frustrating races of my life. Racing at the back of the field, not being able to overtake by all means. Not fun! Championship is still looking ok, 10 points from the leaders, if we get our speed back, there is no reason why we cant repeat our title…

Super GT results Sugo

Super GT results Sepang

Super GT Raninking

Formula Nippon Race 3 Fuji Results

Formula Nippon Rankings

Another podium for us!

I had a fairly good weekend with a very tight qualifying on Sat., missing pole position by 2/100th.

Starting second on the right side in the rain was not the best deal, specially due to the more wet and slippery surface. I lost a couple places after it went to green but mostly lost positions until 6th place because my paddle shift was not working and had to shift gears manually. After 1 lap I found my  way to drive around the problem and managed to recover until 3rd place. Shame we had this problem, better result was possible! Just need a smooth weekend and we’re on top!

My big highlight is next! The Le mans 24h!

THANKS TO NORIAKI for the great photos! ( Nrak photo agency)

Got my new Formula Nippon helmet, will have the sa,e for Le Mans, wanted go to more black and refine some details. came out nice!

Thank you HIDECKS japan. http://www.hidecks.com/

last weekend we had our first Formula Nippon race of the season held at Suzuka.

It was ok for us. A 3rd place is not to bad but looking at our pure potential we could have been up there.

in qualifying I was first in Q1 and Q2 but then I hit some traffic in Q3 which held me back to 3rd.

For the race my start wasn’t great, to much wheelspin so I lost a spot.
I lost a lot of time behind the 3rd placed car while the top 2 took off. Having difficulties to overtake, I then diceded to pit early arround lap 13 to try to pass which worked out!
From that point on it was just a mad dash to catch up the +\- 15 sec delay I had to the lead. The car was awesome and I could put one qualy lap after the other. In the end I caught the leaders to arround 2 sec behind but unfortunatly the 37 lap race was finished.

It’s good to know that we had everything to win but disapointing that we didn’t put it all together.

Looking forward to the next FN race @ Motegi.

The official test in Suzuka was the kick off for the 2010 Formula Nippon season.

It went all good, tested a lot of things. Trying to close the gap with the superior Honda Nakajima cars that got P1 again. We eneded 4th on first day with a 3/10th gap to the lead. The track conditions were very good and our lap times were super fast! When you are doing 1.38 around Suzuka it means business! That’s not far from f1 at all. Last year, Sebastian Vettel was on Pole with a 1:32.160.

So if you look at this year first F1 race in Bahrain and the time gaps between the top F1 cars and new F1 teams that are struggling we would actually not be last in 24th but around P20…. . With our cost friendly Formula Nippon car…

On day 2 it was raining a lot and I ended up fastest. Also in the rain the times were surprisingly fast. 1,54,… This is Formula 3 lap times in the dry…

Day 1:

http://www.f-nippon.co.jp/fn/fnap/app/NList02.dll/?No=NS013888

Day 2:

http://www.f-nippon.co.jp/fn/fnap/app/NList02.dll/?No=NS013891

I gave my team the Apple HI-FI speaker so they can enjoy some good tunes while preparing my car!

Lots of success this year for out great Lexus Team Petronas Toms, GT chamions in drivers+teams, 3rd in Formula Nippon for driver & 2nd in team ranking. And off course the Formula 3 title as usual!

This was our custom champion limited edition present from Juichi and me to our staff, everybody got one for their great job!  Nice Aluminum case from Protex.