December 6th, Kamui Kobayashi, a former Formula 1 driver, set an impressive course record at the event, Speed & Sound Trophy, held at Tsukuba Circuit, Course 2000. The time Kamui recorded by his Super Formula SF14 was 44’008”.

The event called Speed & Sound Trophy was jointly held by various motor sports and automobile magazines such as auto sport and Racing On, and among many interesting programs, “Kamui x SF14 Full-scale Attack” was an idea brought by auto sport magazine.

Like an ordinary race day, Kamui had 3 sessions, a morning installation lap, followed by free practice at noon, and the final session started from 3:10pm which is similar to the time normally held a qualifying session. The sole purpose of the program was to break a course record at Tsukuba Circuit.

With a proximity to Tokyo, Tsukuba Circuit is a popular venue for who wants to have casual motor sports experiences. The typical records are 51 seconds by the fastest tuning car (?) and 52-53 seconds by the GT3 cars. The current course record was set at 46"935 by Juichi Wakisaka with a Formula Nippon car (Leynard 99L ) in 2001.

In the morning, SF14 Toyota driven by Kamui easily broke the record in his second lap and he kept ripping the time. At the end of the morning session, he surprised the audiences with amazing 44"540 !

However, while Kamui Kobayashi and his engineer Kenji Yamada trying to improve the settings, the course condition is getting worse after the cars of the other programs spread oils and different types of tire compounds. The team decided to use “the last” two sets of Bridgestone’s new tires which was announced to step down from the tire supplier of Super Formula by the end of this season.

In the final session, Kamui who kept pressing the overtaking switch of in his SF14 Toyota recorded 44"008 with a small regret of not being able to achieve 43-plus seconds!!

“We are so close to break the wall of 44 seconds! If the condition is not worse that this morning, we might have done that but the course was so dirty. At least we improved the time.” said Kamui.

“I really wanted to record 43-plus seconds but maybe next year if we have a chance to try again! I tried my best to do everything I can like my ordinary qualifying such as warming up tires, etc. It was really tough to shorten 0.1 second in this circuit but Tsukuba Circuit is an extremely fun track to do a time attack like this.

The more detailed story will be covered in the latest “auto sport No.1421” published on December 11th. The inside story of Kamui’s attack laps, the data logger analysis and what Kamui and his engineer Kenji Yamada did to reduce 0.1 second should not be missed. Please find the black SF14 Toyota in the front page!