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.”
Nakajima Racing’s need for a reserve driver was created after three-time Super Formula Champion Naoki Yamamoto suffered career-threatening neck and back injuries in a Super GT accident at Sugo in September 2023. After Yamamoto narrowly escaped another injury in a crash at Fuji this October, the 15-year veteran retired from Super Formula after this season, primarily out of concern for his health.
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.
Koide is a product of the Honda Formula Dream Project (HFDP) that sent Yuki Tsunoda on the path to F1, and most recently saw fellow graduate Kakunoshin Ohta move towards IMSA.
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.