Well, let's start the F-Nippon work again
As soon as I can I'll be updating this thread with all the info, unfortunatelly danny deleted the Nippon thread, so I will have a lot of work ahead. But hey guys, you have your F-Nippon space again
FORMULA NIPPON 2008
TEAMS & DRIVERS
LAWSON IMPUL
#01 Tsugio Matsuda JAP
#02 Benoit Treluyer FRA
After winning the drivers and teams championship in last season, everything changed in Mobilecast IMPUL, starting by the main sponsor, Mobilecast leave, and LAWSON came, now the most important team of Kazuyoshi Hoshino has a totally new sponsor and new colors, and the last two champions of the series, Treluyer who won the championship in 2006 and Matsuda who won the last season in 2007, for sure the most powerfull team for the 2008 season.
PIAA NAKAJIMA
#31 Loic Duval FRA
#32 Takashi Kogure JAP
In the 2007 season PIAA NAKAJIMA finally made it like it's best days, the season was preatty good, mainly in the second half of the season when Kogure started an amazing recover in the championship, and went to the last race fighting for the title, Kogure won and was celebrating the championship, but after the race he was disqualified, and lost the title, a hard hit for all the team, but with the experience of the team in the series and the amazing speed of both drivers, PIAA NAKAJIMA can hope again for the title.
TP CHECKER IMPUL
#20 Kohei Hirate JAP
Previously Arabian Oasis IMPUL, the second team of Kazuyoshi Hoshino in the series now counts with only one driver, after Motoyama leave the team there was a doubt if Hoshino was really going to put a second team in the series, but that doubt disappeared with Kohei Hirate coming for the series, with a new sponsor and new colors the biggest target of the team is to give all the experience needed to Hirate, looking for the 2009 season, when the team can be stronger.
PETRONAS TEAM TOM'S
#36 Andre Lotterer GER
#37 Seiji Ara JAP
With new sponsor ut the same drivers, TEAM TOM'S starts the season looking for even more than just a victory like happened in last season, now supported by Petronas, they want to finally fights for the championship, and the man to fight for that is Andre Lotterer, it was him who won a race last season at Fuji, and that won 2 races in 2006 both under rain, Lotterer is fast and experienced a very good combination that can lead the team to the glory, Seiji Ara stays in the team more because of his experience in the series and his knowledge about setups than because it's speed, the team starts the season as one of the favourites, together with LAWSON IMPUL and PIAA NAKAJIMA.
CERUMO/INGING
#47 Ronnie Quintarelli ITA
#48 Yuji Tachikawa JAP
After losing it's main sponsor in the middle of the 2007 season CERUMO found the way to stay alive in the series uniting forces with INGING, and the fusion resulted in a very strong team, putting together two great drivers, this team can be the biggest surprise of the 2008 season, Quintarelli won it's first race last season at Okayama, and Tachikawa is already knowed as a fast driver, and both will certainly make a great job together in the team.
DOCOMO DANDELION
#40 Kosuke Matsuura JAP
#41 Takeshi Tsuchiya JAP
After a very poor season in 2007 DoCoMo Dandelion changed both drivers, Wirdheim and Carbone are no longer drivers of the team, and by the way it looks that change was indeed good, Matsuura coming from IRL and Tsuchiya coming back to the series after a year out, can really make a good work for this team that after the title in the 2004 season with Richard Lyons never had the same performance, maybe 2008 can be the start of a new era for the team.
KONDO RACING
#03 Naoki Yokomizo JAP
#04 Joao Paulo de Oliveira BRA
Previously knowed as one of the most weak teams of the series, Kondo Racing has made a jump through the table, thanks to the great work of Oliveira who scored all the points of the team in the 2007 season. Oliveira after that was claimed with the prize "Japan Professional Sports Top Rookie Award" a prize given for the best rookie of all sports in Japan. In the other hand his teammate Masataka Yanagida who spent 2 years in the team and never scored a single point was fired, and for his place the team called Naoki Yokomizo, who drove for INGING in last season. The team lost the support from CARCHS, but the support coming from SEGA SAMMY is bigger now, and the team has more chances to get good results than last season, a prove of that was the wet test session at Fuji where Oliveira beat everyone else and put the Kondo car in the top.
TEAM LEMANS
#07 Satoshi Motoyama JAP
#08 Hiroaki Ishiura JAP
Propably the most discussed of the teams since december when the revealed that Satoshi Motoyama was coming for the team, after many years deffending IMPUL, Motoyama finally came to the team that gave him his forst title in the series, this change can mean that Motoyama career is ending but that can mean that he wants a new challenge, after 4 titles in the series, and after being in strong teams for a long time, Motoyama will try to bring back Team LeMans to its best days, a hard job, but something Motoyama can do, with all his talent and experience, he can bring the glory days back to the team. As teammate he will have a rookie driver, Hiroaki Ishiura, coming from Japanese F3, Ishiura is a young talented driver, who will learn a lot with Motoyama, and with his speed will for sure help the team to hit better places than last seasons.
ARTA
#55 Yuji Ide JAP
#56 Takuya Izawa JAP
The 2007 season was a season to forget for ARTA, the only race the team scored points was at Suzuka when Ide did a 3rd place, in a very confusing race. The team that in other time was one of the strongest teams of the series, now is facing a very hard time, Kanieshi is gone and now the team bring Tazuya Izawa from Japanese F3, the team has to find it's best performance again, but the start of the season don't sounds good, Izawa is a good driver, but with no experience in the series, and Ide never showed a good performance there, Aguri Suzuki has a lot to do with his F-Nippon team to make it strong as it could be.
SG 5ZIGEN
#05 Toshihiro Kaneishi JAP
#06 Katsuyuki Hiranaka JAP
The only team who didn't scored a single point in the 2007 season starts 2008 with some good news, Toshihiro Kaneishi is coming from ARTA and with his experience can lead the team to better results than last season, knowed as the worst team in the field 5Zigen wants to show that they can be strong, but for that they have to make a huge jump through the field, and in only one season it's not likely to happen, but some points are something the team can look for now that they have Kaneishi.
STONEMARKET BLAAK CERUMO/INGING
#67 Robert Streit BRA
The brazilian Robert Streit who lost the Japanese F3 title in 2007 to Kazuya Oshima is the only driver of the new STONEMARKET BLAAK CERUMO/INGING, the team is part of the "group" CERUMO/INGING, but has a different main sponsor from the main team of the "corporation", anyway this team has the same support that the main team has, and Streit already showed in the tests that he can be a very good surprise in the 2008 season, the brazilian driver get used to the car very soon, and will propably make a good season.
CIRCUITS & SCHEDULE
SUZUKA CIRCUIT
Rounds in 2008: Round 2 and Round 5
Circuit Record: Takashi Kogure (PIAA NAKAJIMA) - 1:40.510 - November 17th 2007
FUJI SPEEDWAY
Rounds in 2008: Round 1 and Round 7
Circuit Record: Benoit Treluyer (Mobilecast IMPUL) - 1:25.525 - March 31st 2007
TWIN RING MOTEGI
Rounds in 2008: Round 3 and Round 6
Circuit Record: Juichi Wakisaka (ARTA) - 1:33.192 - October 19th 2002
OKAYAMA INTERNATIONAL CIRCUIT
Rounds in 2008: Round 4
Circuit Record: Takashi Kogure (PIAA NAKAJIMA) - 1:17.409 - June 9th 2007
SPORTSLAND SUGO
Rounds in 2008: Round 8
Circuit Record: Takashi Kogure (PIAA NAKAJIMA) - 1:07.827 - September 15th 2007
THE SCHEDULE
ROUND 1 - April 6th FUJI SPEEDWAY -
Race Lenght: 300Km
ROUND 2 - May 11th SUZUKA CIRCUIT -
Race Lenght: 250Km
ROUND 3 - May 25th TWIN RING MOTEGI -
Race Lenght: 250Km
ROUND 4 - June 8th OKAYAMA INTERNATIONAL CIRCUIT -
Race Lenght: 250Km
ROUND 5 - July 13th SUZUKA CIRCUIT -
Race Lenght: 2 Races Weekend
ROUND 6 - August 10th TWIN RING MOTEGI -
Race Lenght: 2 Races Weekend
ROUND 7 - August 31st FUJI SPEEDWAY -
Race Lenght: TBA
ROUND 8 - September 21st SPORTSLAND SUGO -
Race Lenght: 230Km
RULES CHANGES
NEW QUALIFYING SYSTEM
The Qualifying system has changed to the 2008 Season, Formula Nippon now uses a system very similar to the ones used by F1, DTM and some other series...
1st Session: All cars in track, the positons from 16th to 20th or the last place if there is more cars are decided in this session, the remaining drivers pass to the 2nd Session.
Session Time: 20 minutes
2nd Session: The 15 cars remaining after Session 1 went to the track again, and now the places between the 9th and 15th are decided, and only the Top 8 goes for the last and most important session.
Session Time: 10 minutes
3rd Session: The 8 remaining cars go to the last session to decide the pole position and the places till the 8th.
Session Time: 10 minutes
* Between every session there is a 10 minutes break, so the teams can do the refueling work and change the tires *
NEW POINTS SYSTEM
Formula Nippon has changed the Points System for the 2008 Season, now more points are given, and the pole position can score a point too, plus, a special points system is set for the double races weekend.
Normal Races
Pole Position: 1 pt
1st Place: 15 pts
2nd Place: 12 pts
3rd Place: 10 pts
4th Place: 8 pts
5th Place: 6 pts
6th Place: 5 pts
7th Place: 4 pts
8th Place: 3 pts
9th Place: 2 pts
10th Place: 1 pt
Two Races Weekend
First Race (Longest One)
Pole Position: 1 pt
1st Place: 10 pts
2nd Place: 8 pts
3rd Place: 6 pts
4th Place: 5 pts
5th Place: 4 pts
6th Place: 3 pts
7th Place: 2 pts
8th Place: 1 pt
Second Race (Shortest One)
1st Place: 5 pts
2nd Place: 4 pts
3rd Place: 3 pts
4th Place: 2 pts
5th Place: 1 pt
NEW PADDLE SHIFT SYSTEM
Propably the biggest change in the rules in the last years in F-Nippon, the new paddle shift system will make the F-Nippon cars even faster, and will make the battles even more exciting, previously the series used the sequential shift system, and now the new paddle shift was introduced, during the test sessions in the beggining of march we could see the difference that this new system will make, at Suzuka the times where around 2 seconds faster than last year, with Matsuda going into 1:38 in the last day of tests, and that times can be faster, the tests at Suzuka were extremelly cold, with some snow falling in the last day, so a qualifying lap in 1:37 is not impossible.
REVERSE GRID SYSTEM
In the weekends that has 2 races, the grid of the second race will be the results of the first race with the Top 8 in reversed positions.
NEW PRIZE - JRP ROOKIE OF THE YEAR
As the name says this is a prize for the best Rookie of the year, the winner will have a 1 million yens prize, and this prize will be awarded in the Motor Sports Awards Ceremony in the end of the year.
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