Why Super Formula could be on the edge of an independents resurgence

When TGM Grand Prix agreed to become Toyota’s newest Super Formula team for the start of the year, it robbed the Japanese series of one of its few true independent outfits.

For years, the Super Formula grid has been dominated by drivers hand-picked by engine suppliers Toyota and Honda, leaving precious few openings for any talents not belonging to either of the two domestic auto giants.

TGM, which started life as Team Goh in 2022 after splitting from Team Mugen before adopting its current moniker in 2023, was one of the few places a driver from outside could enquire about a seat and be given the time of day.

It afforded likeable Turkish driver Cem Bolukbasi a career lifeline after his mid-season split from the Charouz F2 team. It gave Toshiki Oyu an alternative berth when he turned down Honda’s ‘suggestion’ of a seat at Dandelion Racing. And it allowed Nobuharu Matsushita a way back on to the Super Formula grid after slipping off the Honda roster.

Sadly, neither Oyu nor Matsushita saw out their respective seasons with TGM due to money woes, which explains why ultimately the swashbuckling outfit led by Le Mans 24 Hours-winning Team Goh mechanic Kazuhiro Ikeda had to do a deal with Toyota.

Under its new ‘KDDI TGM GP TGR-DC’ guise, TGM is now essentially a Racing Bulls-style junior team for Toyota to train its newest recruits, with Kazuto Kotaka and Seita Nonaka currently forming its line-up. Indeed, almost as if to mimic Red Bull's chopping and changing in Formula 1, Nonaka was promoted mid-season after original signing Hibiki Taira was deemed not to have made the grade.

Kazuto Kotaka, KDDI TGMGP TGR-DC, Toshiki Oyu, SANKI VERTEX PARTNERS CERUMO・INGING

While the team is undoubtedly on a much surer financial footing with Toyota’s help, it has also gone from being a near-constant source of headlines and intrigue to something of a non-entity stuck firmly in the lower midfield, with no points scored so far this year.

But earlier this month at Sugo, plans for a new Super Formula team in 2026 were revealed that might just help fill the hole left by the original TGM squad.

Delightworks Racing is a relatively new team, having only launched last year. After a brief foray into the Formula Regional Japanese Championship, it took over the Toda Racing effort to enter a two-car team in Super Formula Lights this season, immediately attracting attention with a Sauber-esque black-and-lime green colour scheme.

The team is helmed by Masato Shimoyama, who made a handful of starts in British Formula 3 back in 2003, and at Sugo he appeared in a special press conference alongside the driver who will pilot the sole Honda-powered Delightworks car next year: Matsushita.

For F2 race winner Matsushita, known in the paddock simply as ‘Nobu’, the opportunity to drive for Delightworks is less of a second chance than a third chance. It looked like his career in Super Formula had come to an end after the 2023 season, when B-Max Racing scaled back from two cars to one and signed Honda junior driver Iori Kimura.

TGM then supplied Matsushita with an unexpected lifeline for 2024, but the team’s bold plan of banking headline-grabbing results in the first part of the year with the aim of attracting sponsorship to fund the remainder of the season didn’t pan out. ‘Nobu’ was let go after only three rounds in favour of the Japanese driver who best encapsulates the phrase ‘safe pair of hands’, Honda’s resident super-sub Hiroki Otsu.

Nobuharu Matsushita, Delightworks, Masato Shimoyama, Delightworks

The good news for Matsushita this time around is that Delightworks does not seem to be short of money, having signed sponsorship agreements with Team Mugen and Super Formula itself this year, while also recruiting the 31-year-old along with two-time series champion Tomoki Nojiri to work as driver advisors for its Super Formula Lights effort.

And the team has already made it clear its intentions to expand to a second car in the future, potentially as early as 2027, which would open up another space on the grid for a driver without explicit ties to Honda or Toyota to slot into.

Delightworks’ announcement comes as a major vote of confidence in Super Formula, which is now on course for at least a 23-car grid next year, which would be the largest of the century. And that’s assuming that no other one-car teams elect to expand their efforts.

As a reminder, while most Super Formula teams run two cars, there’s nothing in the rules to prevent teams from running a single car, with B-Max, Rookie Racing, ThreeBond Racing and the new-for-2025 Triple Tree Racing squad all falling into that category.

While Rookie Racing is a Toyota team through and through (being owned by none other than Akio Toyoda himself) and B-Max has recently deepened its ties with Honda, ThreeBond and Triple Tree, which both also use Honda power units, can be classified as full independents.

B-Max, meanwhile, might be termed a hybrid. It is running one car for Honda’s reigning Super Formula Lights champion Syun Koide this year, but is keen to get back to being a two-car outfit as soon as possible, and team owner Ryuji Kumita has a preference for the second driver to be an international, with the objective of using European knowhow to his team’s benefit.

Yusuke Mitsui, Delightworks Racing

Even Triple Tree, ostensibly formed with the sole objective of allowing Juju Noda to stay on the grid after she parted ways with TGM, is open to running a second car in future, while ThreeBond is also thought to be on the lookout for international drivers for 2026.

It not only means the Super Formula grid could conceivably reach 24 or 25 cars in the next couple of years, but also that there will be more slots for genuine independent drivers.

Of course, the fact that Honda and Toyota retain a high degree of control over who drives for which team has acted as a guarantee of quality over the years, preventing the surge of pay drivers from truly taking hold. Toyota in particular deserves praise for recruiting more international drivers, with Sacha Fenestraz returning to the series this year from Formula E and Zak O'Sullivan and Oliver Rasmussen also proving worthy additions to the grid.

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But, equally, having at least a handful of teams that are not completely beholden to the engine manufacturers’ wishes is also important to maintain a healthy ecosystem and prevent the series from becoming a completely closed shop.

A couple of years ago, during an interview with Motorsport.com, JRP boss Yoshihisa Ueno outlined a vision of a 30-car grid, with a third of those seats filled by non-Japanese drivers. The arrival of Delightworks, and the growing ambitions of some of the series’ other smaller teams, looks like it could be a major step towards that vision turning into reality.

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