TOKYO -RIJ- (April 8, 1996) Former Formula One driver Aguri Suzuki announced his new Formula Nippon team the Funai Super Aguri in Tokyo on Monday. After crash in 1995 Japanese Grand Prix's qualifying, he retired from Formula One and started to build his Formula Nippon team in Japan. Aguri drives Nissan Primera in All Japan Touring Car Championship and Nissan Skyline GT-R in All Japan GT Car Championship, too.
Formula Nippon is former All Japan F3000 series and use F3000 chassis in 1996. After FIA International F3000 Championship decided to be Lola's one-make series, Japanese top formula series chose to follow former F3000 in 1996. Lola, Reynard and domestic chassis Dome will run again in Japan as new Formula Nippon (Nippon means Japan in Japanese.)
Formula Nippon cars are same with F3000, but race system will be changed, especially qualifying. All drivers run in first qualifying session, then top six drivers can run final single car qualifying session and it decides top six grid as well as former IMSA-GTP's single car qualifying system. Fuji Television supports the series and will on-air all races at Sunday's night.
Aguri Suzuki's team joins with Heros Racing, owned by Hiromu Tanaka because Formula Nippon teams must be two car team. Satoru Nakajima and Ukyo Katayama were running F2 and F3000 in Heros Racing and won champions, then they got chance to be Formula One drivers. Katsutomo Kaneishi of former Heros Racing's driver and Satoshi Motoyama will drive Funai (known as Futec) Super Aguri team's cars.
Total 30 cars will run the first round of new Formula Nippon Championship at Suzuka Circuit on April 27-28.