Drivers came from near and far to run in Super Formula’s post-season winter test at Suzuka Circuit earlier this month for many reasons. For a few, it was about using this test to position themselves for full-time seats on the 2025 grid.
Perhaps no driver put forth a more convincing case than Igor Fraga, who was the fastest ‘rookie’ in every session across three days – including the final day, reserved for rookie candidates like him.
It helps that this is not Fraga’s first time behind the wheel of a Super Formula car. He has attended the last three winter tests in a row, but this is the closest that the Brazilian-Japanese driver – best known for winning four Gran Turismo World Series esports championships – has come to a full-time ride in Super Formula.
“The testing on both days, I think went quite well,” Fraga said after the second day of testing on December 12. “Yesterday there was a lot of adaptation going on. I drove the same car last year, but I only drove GT3 cars this season so it was a big step. It’s 20 seconds per lap quicker, this car, compared to what I was driving this season.
“I needed to try to find the limit. But every time that I was trying to push the car, the limit was not there, so it was like a repetition of me trying to find the limit of the car until I could finally start to reach it at the end of the day. But still, on high speed corners, I felt… I wouldn’t say scary, but I couldn’t feel confident enough to push.”
Fraga and his Nakajima Racing engineers then made changes for the second day that helped him extract more pace.
“The car felt a lot more comfortable for me to drive, and I could feel a lot more confidence in pushing the car towards the limit,” Fraga said. “I think the times (on new tires) were quite decent, and I think at the end of the day it was very positive.”
Since restarting his ‘full-metal’ racing career in 2023 after two lost seasons due in part to pandemic-related travel restrictions, Fraga has primarily raced full-time in Super GT GT300 with perennial minnow team Arnage Racing, and has only managed two top 10 finishes in 16 races.
He’s had a much better time in single-seaters though: In 2023, Fraga was fourth in the Super Formula Lights championship with six podiums and a victory at Sportsland Sugo. After joining Super Formula as a series ambassador, Fraga became Nakajima Racing’s reserve driver in 2024.
“I think seeing their drivers, how they deal with the team, and also knowing the engineers, the mechanics, and everything, made me prepared for the testing,” he reflected. “I felt a lot more comfortable being inside the team, and the communication itself was a lot easier to do, and I think it helped a lot during these two days.”
And Fraga – who was toiling through a difficult season in FIA Formula 3 just four short years ago – is now the presumptive favorite to replace one of Super Formula’s greatest champions at the team owned by Japan’s first real F1 hero, Satoru Nakajima.
“To be honest, I try not to think about it,” Fraga responded when asked about this possibility. “I just try to do my best. So if I get an opportunity to drive in Super Formula, I will do my best to be up there. The goal every time is to win, so nothing changes really.
“I don’t feel like I left anything behind, I feel like I’ve done the job quietly, and I think it was quite positive. So I believe there’s a chance, and I hope that I can get a seat for next year. It’s what I’m looking for.”
It has been over eight years since the final class of the famous GT Academy, and only one previous GT Academy graduate, Jann Mardenborough, ran as much as one full season in Super Formula in 2017.
But now Fraga has carried the torch for a new generation of drivers leveraging esports success into advancing up the racing ladder in the real world, and he’s not the only one in Japan. Rikuto Kobayashi, a Gran Turismo World Series championship runner-up, was this year’s Super Formula Lights runner-up and tested the Dallara SF23 for the first time. Yusuke Tomibayashi, who won one of the very first GTWS exhibition events back in 2016, has won four consecutive championships in the Super Taikyu endurance series.
“It’s really cool. And there’s more and more drivers having the chance to get a real racing seat. For me, I think this very positive,” Fraga said of the continued connection from sim to real racing.
“Motorsports is very expensive, and it’s a way that opens up a lot of opportunities for people that couldn’t begin in real-life (racing) because of many reasons.
“Being able to spread more and share with more people the passion for motorsport, and everything… I think it’s really cool to see. I hope that more people are able to step into real motorsport, or even get professionalized in esports, and be able to get a perfect life doing that!”
Fraga’s journey has been well-documented around the world, but outside of Japan, 25-year-old Syun Koide doesn’t have much of a following with fans overseas – something he hopes to change very quickly.
He got his start in single-seaters at 20, a rather late start compared to countless teenagers who went straight up out of karting. The late start didn’t deter Koide though: he won the FIA Japanese F4 title in 2022 – his third year in the series – and last year he won the Super Formula Lights Championship in his second year. He also became one of just a handful of Super GT drivers to win on debut, doing so in 2023.
Koide’s already secured a promotion to Super GT’s GT500 class with Honda next season, thanks to Ohta’s new IMSA commitments opening up a spot in one of its five cars, and now he hopes that a promotion to Super Formula is confirmed in the coming days.
This was Koide’s second time testing a Super Formula car with B-Max Racing Team, and versus his debut test last year, this time he could extract a bit more pace, representative of the form that those within Honda believe he’s capable of.
“I was able to control the car and improved my performance a lot more than last year,” he said.
“My experience in the Super Formula Lights series and becoming the champion there enabled me to actually feel the car a lot better. I was able to predict what the car would do a lot better. I would say I’m not 100 percent yet, but I can pull it up there by taking just a few more steps.”
It wasn’t a perfect three days of testing for Koide – he did run off course a couple of times earlier that day as he attempted to find the limit – but he managed to post respectable lap times and completed 178 laps over three days.
B-Max Racing is strengthening its ties to Honda, but still has a difficult task to keep up with established super-teams like Mugen and TOM’S. Even a veteran like Nobuharu Matsushita had difficulty raising the team’s level outside of a masterful wet-weather win at Suzuka in 2022.
But Koide is ready for the challenge if B-Max or Honda ultimately decides to go with him in 2025, though it would come at the expense of Iori Kimura being one-and-done after he won the Super Formula Lights title in 2023 – the year before Koide.
“I have confidence if I can grasp a seat next year. If so, I’m really motivated to get good results,” he said.
“I also want to appeal to the fans in America and in other places, and want them to see how I perform next year.”
“Of course, my performance is one of my strongest characteristics. But I also have an open mind – I’ll go and watch races overseas, I really enjoy the environment there. And being able to connect with a wider audience, I would be able to get more fans!”
