After two years of dominating Super Formula, Nojiri returned to earth in 2023 amid his struggles to come to terms with the new SF23 aero package, with its reduced rear downforce and resultant shift towards oversteer. That showed when he suffered an uncharacteristic pre-season testing crash.
Matters weren’t helped by Liam Lawson’s arrival on the other side of the Team Mugen garage, and yet he still matched the Kiwi’s tally of three wins, with the pair split by just half a point in the standings despite Nojiri missing Autopolis with a health scare. With champion Ritomo Miyata and Lawson both moving on, Nojiri enters 2024 as the heavy favourite.
A glance at the Super Formula title standings shows that Nojiri ranked third, 8.5 points down on Miyata, despite missing a race. That was in the fourth round of the year at Autopolis, where Nojiri complained of chest pain while he was already on his way to the track, went to hospital, and was diagnosed with a pneumothorax, essentially a small hole in one of his lungs.
The result was his first absence from a race since his 2014 debut.
Source: Autosport