Nojiri is aiming to turn out to be the primary driver to win three Japanese prime single-seater titles in a row since Satoru Nakajima in 1986 this 12 months, having established himself because the dominant driver of the previous two seasons.
The Staff Mugen star’s title defence ostensibly acquired off to a constructive begin in final week’s one and solely pre-season check at Suzuka as he set the perfect time throughout the 2 days of operating, a 1m35.955s, on Monday afternoon.
Nevertheless, he concluded the second and closing day of the check a lowly sixteenth following a uncommon crash at Flip 6.
Early suggestions from drivers means that the SF23 has a a lot better tendency to oversteer than its SF19 predecessor, the results of a radically revised aero bundle aimed toward reducing downforce to enhance raceability.
This shift in steadiness seems to have thrown Nojiri off his stride forward of the opening race weekend at Fuji subsequent month.
“By way of automotive steadiness, it felt like there was an awesome lack of downforce,” stated Nojiri. “It’s not constant in any respect. That wasn’t the case for my automotive final 12 months. I by no means needed to appropriate the steering [mid-corner].
“I wish to get this 12 months’s automotive to that stage [of consistency], however trying on the aero map, I don’t assume it can occur.”
Requested if he felt there was room to additional enhance his laptime, Nojiri replied: “It’s tough, because it was already 5pm after I set that point. If it had been an hour earlier, I believe it might have been a low, mid 1m36s.”
Nojiri’s chief engineer Toshihiro Ichise stated he felt the two-time champion’s greatest lap happened because of the situations on the time suiting the #1 automotive reasonably than any inherent efficiency benefit.
He defined that the observe situations when Nojiri’s greatest lap was set induced understeer, serving to to appropriate the steadiness that the Mugen driver had been fighting beforehand.
“Automobiles fighting oversteer have a tendency to provide higher instances because the observe situations enhance,” Ichise instructed Motorsport.com’s Japanese version.
“When there are higher situations, similar to in qualifying, the friction coefficient rises, and the rear tyres, that are wider than the fronts, are extra affected and understeer tends to happen.
“On the finish of the primary day, everyone placed on new tyres and the observe situations improved dramatically. Due to this fact the rear grip was comparatively higher, and people vehicles like us that had been fighting oversteer entered the candy spot and will set good instances.
“Nevertheless, there’s no method we’re going to have situations like that in race week. Temperatures will likely be larger, and the observe situations will likely be worse. It simply so occurred that after we set that point, the situations had been good for us.”
