SSF Insider vol.12

“The Circus Returns… and This Time It’s Angry.”

If last year’s inaugural Scorpio Super Formula season was the moment the lights flickered on, 2026 is when someone pours petrol on the stage and throws in a match.

Eighteen rounds. Faster drivers. Bigger egos. And the sort of grid that makes you think: this might get messy. The championship kicks off at Mount Panorama, which is not so much a racetrack as it is a narrow ribbon of asphalt draped over a mountain by someone who clearly had a wicked sense of humour. It’s the perfect place to begin a season because if a driver isn’t awake yet, the wall will wake them up. But before the first green flag flies, let’s look at the protagonists in this season’s unfolding drama.

Apex Motorsports: The Champions With a Target

The defending champions Apex Motorsports arrive in 2026 with the same swagger they had when they left last season: loud engines, sharper elbows, and a trophy cabinet that now requires a structural reinforcement. At the center of it all is Onell Murad, better known as SuperS2K. The 2025 champion returns not as a challenger, but as the man everyone else wants to beat. Last year he drove with the cold precision of a surgeon and occasionally the brutality of a demolition crew.

Beside him is Ryan “Drift King”, the teammate who proved that sideways can, in fact, be forwards. When he’s on form, he’s terrifyingly quick. When he’s not, he still somehow ends up on the podium. And then there’s the new addition: Rodriguez.

Now, bringing a third driver into a championship-winning team is a bit like adding chilli sauce to a perfectly good steak. It might make it better… or it might burn the whole thing down. Rodriguez arrives with plenty to prove and the enormous pressure of not being the man who ruins Apex’s dynasty before it even properly begins.

FoxHound: Maltese Assassin Returns

Last year there was one driver who didn’t race the full season and still made the championship standings look nervous.

Larson. Ten rounds.Two wins. Seven podiums. Fourth in the standings.

That’s not a season. That’s a threat. Had he competed in all eighteen rounds, the championship fight might have been very different indeed. Now he returns full-time with FoxHound, bringing with him a reputation for terrifying pace and a driving style that suggests braking is more of a polite suggestion than a rule.

Alongside him sits a newcomer Riccardo Ekro whose job description is simple: keep up if you can. That’s not easy when your teammate drives like a guided missile. FoxHound could be the biggest problem Apex faces this year. Or they could implode spectacularly. Either outcome would be entertaining.

Scorpio eSports: The Calculated Assault

If Apex is brute force and FoxHound is raw speed, Scorpio Esports is something far more methodical. Their lead weapon is Panagiotis Grammenos, last season’s contender and a graduate of the RaceGen Driver Development Program. He’s calm, precise, and extremely fast - the sort of driver who quietly collects points while others are busy arguing with barriers.

Joining him is Alex Strobel, already a proven force for Scorpio in iRacing competition. Strobel is the sort of driver who doesn’t shout about his speed, he simply demonstrates it, repeatedly, until people notice.

Then there’s Kelly “Method” Marcum. Last season he dipped his toe into the championship as an independent and managed a best finish of 10th. Respectable, certainly, but joining Scorpio eSports suggests there’s far more pace waiting to be unleashed. If Method adapts quickly, Scorpio might have assembled the most balanced driver lineup on the grid. And balanced teams win championships.

Simpulse: The New Faces and Old Contenders

Last season Supa quietly built one of the most respectable campaigns in the paddock. Best race finish of 4th and the championship position of 6th.

In other words, always close enough to annoy the leaders.

Now he returns with Simpulse, bringing with him newcomer A. Guzman.

New drivers are fascinating creatures. Sometimes they arrive gently, learning the ropes and politely staying out of trouble. Other times they burst onto the scene like a bull in a china shop. No one is entirely sure which version Guzman will be.

Not even Guzman.

The Lone Wolves

Two drivers stand outside the safety of team structures. First is Rybird, returning once again as an independent. Drivers like him are motorsport’s equivalent of freelance mercenaries: no team politics, no complicated strategies, just raw racing. Then we have Leonidas Owen, an Italian newcomer stepping into the championship with everything to prove and absolutely nothing to lose. History suggests that drivers with nothing to lose are often the ones who cause the most chaos.

Mount Panorama: Where the Season Begins

And so we arrive at Mount Panorama, Bathurst. It’s steep. It’s narrow. It’s lined with walls that are extremely enthusiastic about meeting racing cars. The climb through The Mountain, the plunge down The Esses, and the terrifying blast down Conrod Straight will test every driver on this grid. Championships aren’t won at Bathurst. But they can absolutely start going wrong there.

The Big Questions

As the 2026 season begins, several questions hang in the air like tire smoke:

• Can SuperS2K defend his title against a fully committed Larson?

• Will Apex Motorsports maintain their dominance or crumble under the weight of expectation?

• Is Scorpio Esports quietly assembling a championship campaign?

• Can Supa finally convert consistent pace into podiums?

• And which newcomer will shock the paddock first?

One thing is certain. When the lights go out at Mount Panorama, all the predictions, preseason chatter, and polite speculation will evaporate faster than tire rubber on hot asphalt. Then we’ll find out who’s fast.

And more importantly - who’s brave.

Round 1: Mount Panorama

The Moment the Season Lost Its Mind

Qualifying at Mount Panorama began in exactly the way everyone expected.

Which, in motorsport, is usually a warning sign. At the top of the timing sheets sat the reigning champion Onell Murad – SuperS2K, who delivered a lap so absurdly quick it was almost rude. His pole time was nearly a second faster than last year’s pole, which around Bathurst is less an improvement and more a public declaration of dominance. Behind him, naturally, was his teammate Ryan “Drift King.” The two Apex Motorsports cars sat on the front row looking exactly like they had for much of last season: confident, comfortable, and rather smug. The rest of the grid appeared to be playing the role of supporting actors in what threatened to become The Apex Show: Season Two.

You could almost hear the collective sigh across the paddock.

“Oh good,” everyone thought. “Here we go again.”

But then something unexpected happened.

Supa appeared. Not metaphorically. Quite literally. On the timing screens. In third place. Now, Supa is not a slow driver. Last season he finished sixth in the championship and flirted with the podium more than once (yet never reached it). But Bathurst qualifying is a brutal affair, the sort of session where even very good drivers occasionally look like they’re attempting to park a bus on roller skates.

Yet somehow Supa threaded his Simpulse machine around the mountain and planted it firmly on the second row: his best qualifying result in the championship so far. Suddenly the grid looked a little less predictable.

Meanwhile, over in the FoxHound garage, things were… awkward. Larson, the man who terrified the championship last year despite only racing part-time, could manage only sixth on the grid. It was his worst qualifying result in the series. Now sixth place at Bathurst isn’t exactly a catastrophe, it’s still near the sharp end, but expectations around Larson have grown to the point where anything less than “alarmingly fast” feels like a mild scandal.

Still, qualifying is only half the story. And the race ahead was 48 laps long.

Three hundred kilometres. At Bathurst. Which is roughly the motorsport equivalent of saying, “Relax, everything is under control,” just before the washing machine explodes.

The Opening Act

When the lights went out, the race unfolded in a way that initially looked almost disappointingly sensible.

Ryan briefly inherited the lead after Onell's bad start, while Supa hovered nearby, close enough to make the Apex driver slightly uncomfortable. Not dangerously close, but close in the way a mosquito hovering near your ear becomes deeply irritating. However, champions tend to behave like rubber bands. You can stretch them for a while, but eventually they snap back.

And sure enough, S2K began climbing again. By the lap 5 he had returned to the front and, once there, started doing that extremely annoying champion thing where the gap slowly grows lap by lap. Ryan tucked himself comfortably into second, Supa continued an impressively composed run in third, and the race began to look… settled. Which is precisely the moment Bathurst usually decides to intervene.

The Moment Everything Went Wrong

Lap 25. Turn 2. And suddenly - disaster. S2K crashed. Now, if you followed last year’s race at Bathurst, this will sound suspiciously familiar. In 2025 the champion also introduced his car to the wall at Turn 2, although that time he managed to do it on lap one, forcing himself into a heroic recovery drive from last place to finish second. This year he showed remarkable improvement. He managed 24 laps before crashing. Progress.

Still, the damage wasn’t terminal. He limped back to the pits, the Apex crew swarmed over the car, and it looked like he might yet salvage something from the race. Then, moments later, he crashed again. At this point the paddock began raising eyebrows. According to S2K, the second incident was caused by a technical issue with his steering wheel. Which may well be true. Super Formula machines are complicated and occasionally something decides to stop working at the worst possible moment. However, there is also a long and proud motorsport tradition of blaming the equipment when things go wrong.

“The steering wheel failed.”

“The brakes disappeared.”

“The car suddenly developed a mind of its own.”

These explanations often translate loosely into: I may have slightly misjudged that corner.

But regardless of the exact cause, the result was clear. The reigning champion was out of contention. And suddenly the entire race had gone completely mad.

The Championship Wakes Up

Up until that moment the race had been following a fairly predictable script: Apex controlling the front, Supa impressing everyone with a solid podium run, and the rest of the field trying to keep up. But when S2K’s car sat wounded in the pits, something shifted.

It was lap 25. The halfway point. Not the dramatic final laps. Just lap 25.

And yet somehow you could feel it.

The season - the real season - had just begun.

Opportunity Smells Like Burning Rubber

When S2K’s race imploded for the second time, the cameras cut to the cockpit of Ryan “Drift King.” And there it was. The smirk. Not a big one. Not the sort that would get you booed by the crowd. Just the tiny upward curl of the mouth that says, “Well… this is convenient.”

Anyone who watched Suzuka last season would recognise it immediately. That race had followed a remarkably similar script: S2K comfortably leading, everything under control, and then - bang - an incident. Ryan suddenly promoted. Ryan suddenly looking like a man who had accidentally found twenty euros in his old jeans.

Of course, when asked about it afterwards he was all sympathy.

“Unfortunate for the team… tough break for S2K… we win and lose together.”

Yes. Quite. Because while racing drivers are very good at saying the correct things into microphones, they are also competitive to the point of mild insanity. And if your teammate crashes out of the lead, the polite response is not grief.

It’s opportunity.

And Ryan knows this better than anyone. Last year he quietly built a season on the sort of relentless consistency that makes accountants proud. He collected more podium finishes than anyone else on the grid. Not always the fastest, perhaps, but always there. Always lurking. Always ready to inherit the chaos when others made mistakes. And now, suddenly, the chaos had arrived again.

With S2K limping around somewhere behind and Larson still buried further down the order, Ryan was leading the race.

For the first time that afternoon the championship began whispering to him.

He could smell the victory.He could almost feel the trophy cabinet being measured. There was only one small inconvenience - Supa. Because while Ryan enjoyed his sudden promotion to first place, the Simpulse driver stubbornly refused to disappear. The gap hovered at roughly three seconds which in racing terms is that uncomfortable distance where the driver behind isn’t quite attacking, but also isn’t going away. It’s like a mosquito in a quiet bedroom. You can’t see it, but you absolutely know it’s there.

Shortly after the race began to unravel, someone stuck a microphone in front of Apex Motorsports team advisor Melmut Harko, a man whose personality sits somewhere between a disappointed school headmaster and a thunderstorm.

Harko, for those unfamiliar, is not known for delicate diplomacy.

When asked about S2K’s crash, he sighed in the way one does when discovering a raccoon has somehow entered the kitchen.

“Well,” he said gloomily, “if you drive into the wall, the wall usually wins. This is not a new discovery in motorsport.”

Charming. One of our anonymous reporters had gently suggested that perhaps technical issues may have played a role.

Harko stared at him for a moment.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “Sometimes the steering wheel fails. Sometimes the brakes fail. And sometimes… the driver fails.”

There was a pause long enough to make several people in the paddock suddenly very interested in their shoes.

“But Ryan,” Harko continued, “Ryan is different.”

Different how?

“He finishes races.”

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/da54fb_c7a068e1d4294491bf2d0aa2c9458d50/480p/mp4/file.mp4

AMS' Melmut Harko never seems to look happy

Right... According to paddock gossip - which, like all good gossip, may or may not be wildly exaggerated - the internal politics at Apex Motorsports have always been… interesting. On paper the team is built around S2K, the reigning champion, the headline act, the man with the pace to obliterate a lap record when the mood strikes him. But in the background sits Ryan, the quiet accumulator of points. The man who never seems particularly flustered when things go wrong for others.

When asked directly whether Apex had a preferred championship candidate this year, Harko responded with all the warmth of a glacier.

“We prefer drivers who bring the car home,” he said.

Another pause.

“Championships are not won by crashing in Turn 2.”

Somewhere in the paddock, several journalists began writing very quickly.

And so the race moved into its final phase with a new and fascinating dynamic.

Ryan led. The defending champion was wounded. Larson was nowhere near the front. And looming quietly in second place, still hovering at that slightly irritating three-second gap, was Supa: the man who had started the race simply hoping for a respectable result and was now staring directly at the possibility of something far bigger.

Bathurst had done what Bathurst always does.

It had taken a perfectly sensible race……and turned it into a political thriller.

Meanwhile, In The Rest of the Circus…

While all this Shakespearean drama was unfolding at the front, Ryan plotting destiny, Supa hovering ominously, and S2K inventing new and creative ways to meet Turn 2, it is worth remembering that there were, in fact, other drivers in this race. It’s easy to forget this in Scorpio Super Formula, because the front usually produces enough chaos to fill several soap operas. But further down the order, the rest of the grid was busy performing its own brand of mechanical theatre.

Take Panagiotis Grammenos. Now Grammenos had the sort of afternoon that can only be described as fast but deeply unfortunate. Twice he crashed. Twice he limped back to the pits. Twice the Scorpio eSports crew rebuilt the car with the grim determination of people repairing a kitchen after a gas explosion. And once he returned to the track? He was absolutely flying. Lap after lap he was matching, sometimes even beating, the leaders’ pace. It was genuinely impressive. Unfortunately, he was also nearly a lap behind. And in motorsport that’s a bit like showing up to a marathon in excellent running shoes… the day after it finished. Yes, you might be quick. Yes, the stride looks fantastic. But ultimately nobody cares because the winner is already drinking champagne. Still, credit where it’s due: Grammenos was clawing his way back through the field like a man determined to prove a point.

Elsewhere the debut of Rodriguez for Apex Motorsports ended not with glory, but with the mechanical equivalent of a shrug. His car simply gave up. No dramatic crash. No spectacular flames. Just a quiet, disappointing retirement, the racing world’s equivalent of your computer freezing while you’re writing an important document. The team rolled the car back into the garage. The garage door rolled down. Everyone collectively said: “Boo.”

Further up the order, however, things were becoming considerably more entertaining. Larson was trying to salvage something out if it in 4th. But the battle for 5th had turned into a full-blown boxing match between Riccardo Ekro and Alex Strobel. Ekro, the FoxHound newcomer, was having the sort of debut that makes team bosses nod approvingly while pretending they expected this all along. Strobel, representing Scorpio eSports, was equally determined not to give an inch. Lap after lap they chased each other across the mountain like two angry hornets, trading tenths, feinting into corners, occasionally looking like they might try something heroic and possibly idiotic. The fight was brilliant. And it would continue all the way to the final lap - but we’ll come back to that.

Behind them, the race had settled into the slightly quieter rhythm that happens when everyone realises the walls at Bathurst are extremely enthusiastic about collecting racing cars.

Rybird and Kelly “Method” were circulating in ninth and tenth, doing the sensible thing and simply banking laps. In a championship as chaotic as SSF, survival is often half the battle. Meanwhile Grammenos, still furious with physics, continued dragging his battered machine back toward the points like a man hauling a broken shopping trolley up a hill.

Then there was Leonidas Owen. The Italian newcomer was having what the we might politely call a learning experience. Bathurst, it turns out, is not a circuit that welcomes rookies with open arms. It’s more like a stern driving instructor who slaps the dashboard every time you miss an apex. Leonidas attacked the mountain with plenty of enthusiasm, but the results were… mixed. Watching him wrestle the car through the Esses was a bit like watching someone attempt to parallel park a Ferrari in a Roman alleyway while ten angry scooters honk behind them. Lots of movement, plenty of passion, but not always the cleanest execution.

Still, every lap he survived was another small victory.

The Curious Case of Larson

And then there was Larson. Now normally, when you talk about Larson in Scorpio Super Formula, the tone becomes slightly nervous. This is the man who last year at Brands Hatch won by 41 seconds, which in racing terms is less a victory and more a polite suggestion that everyone else might consider taking up knitting instead. On that day he didn’t just beat S2K. He evaporated him. So when the grid assembled at Bathurst, Larson was widely considered the biggest threat to the reigning champion. The paddock expected fireworks, heroics, terrifying lap times and perhaps a small amount of controlled chaos. Instead… he looked a bit like a man who had wandered into the wrong supermarket.

All afternoon Larson hovered around fourth place. Not attacking. Not collapsing. Just sort of… there. Like a very fast piece of furniture. Which was deeply strange. Because this is the same driver who normally attacks circuits like they’ve personally insulted his family. Naturally, the paddock began inventing explanations.

Some say he put his left shoe on his right foot, and his right shoe on his left foot, which would explain why the pedals felt unusual.

Some say he spent the morning recalibrating his steering wheel and accidentally calibrated it to a tractor in rural Iowa.

Some say he mistook Bathurst for a fuel-saving exercise and spent the race driving as if petrol cost seven hundred euros a litre.

And one particularly creative mechanic insisted that Larson had actually downloaded the wrong setup file, and spent most of the race driving a car configured for Monaco in heavy rain.

Whatever the reason, the terrifying FoxHound superstar simply never looked terrifying. He spent lap after lap clinging to fourth place while behind him Riccardo Ekro and Alex Strobel were having a far more entertaining argument about it. Then, with six laps remaining, the situation deteriorated. Approaching the mountain section Larson drifted slightly wide, the rear stepped out, and the car kissed the wall with the sort of gentle crunch that instantly ruins your afternoon. The damage wasn’t catastrophic, but it was enough. The wounded FoxHound machine slowed dramatically, and suddenly both Ekro and Strobel swept past. Fourth place vanished. Then fifth. And just like that, the most feared driver on the grid had turned a mediocre race into a properly miserable one.

Now if you want to understand the mood at FoxHound, you need to meet their team principal: Whiplash. If Melmut Harko resembles a disappointed headmaster who believes joy should be illegal, Whiplash is the exact opposite. He is loud, theatrical, and permanently looks as though he has just been told something hilarious. When asked about Larson’s race, Whiplash burst out laughing.

“Ah yes,” he said cheerfully. “Today Larson was… how do I say this politely… not very Larson.”

One of our anonymous reporters asked whether the team was concerned.

“Concerned?” Whiplash said. “No, no, no. Concern is for dentists and accountants.”

He waved a hand dismissively.

“Larson is like a volcano. Sometimes quiet. Sometimes exploding. Today we had the quiet volcano.”

And the crash?

“Oh that?” Whiplash shrugged. “Bathurst walls are very persuasive. They convince many drivers to reconsider their trajectory.”

He leaned closer to the microphone.

“But look at Ekro! First race with us and he is fighting at the front. That is fantastic. Maybe next race we give Larson the rookie handbook and let Ekro read the advanced chapter.”

At this point someone politely asked whether Larson would appreciate that comment.

Whiplash grinned.

“Oh, Larson does not care what I say. He only cares about being fast. Next race he will probably win by thirty seconds just to annoy me.”

He paused.

“And honestly, I would enjoy that very much.”

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/da54fb_cc4f38728cb34c12a0c36fa9e04e5a45/480p/mp4/file.mp4

Whiplash was optimistic before the race and kept his optimism despite all odds during the race

And so, as the race approached its final laps, the mighty Larson had faded from the story, his damaged car limping around somewhere behind the leading battles.

At the front Ryan still led. Supa was still lurking. Ekro and Strobel were still fighting like two caffeinated squirrels over fourth place.

And Bathurst, as always, was quietly preparing one final act.

Six Laps of Sanity… Followed by None

With six laps to go, the race appeared to be drifting calmly toward a fairly predictable ending. Ryan was leading at Mount Panorama. Supa sat behind him. The gap hovered just under three seconds. In other words: manageable.

Then, rather suddenly, it wasn’t. With six laps remaining the gap dropped under a second. Now, racing drivers will tell you they don’t get nervous. They’ll claim they’re calm professionals, laser-focused athletes capable of ignoring pressure.

This is nonsense. Because the moment someone appears in your mirrors at Bathurst, closing rapidly, the brain begins producing several extremely unpleasant thoughts. Most of them involve gravel traps. Ryan began doing what all drivers do when defending a lead: checking the chasing car for signs of weakness.

Specifically, he wanted to see a little light. On the intake of the SF23, there’s a small indicator that reveals the state of a driver’s overtake boost. If it glows red, it means the driver behind has almost nothing left. A quarter of a tank, so to speak. And if you see red? You relax. Ryan looked in his mirrors. No light. Which was strange.

So as he blasted past the pits he radioed the team.

“Can you check Supa’s overtake light?”

A moment passed. Then the engineer replied.

“There is no light. Supa has no overtake left. You are safe.”

Ah. The most dangerous sentence in motorsport.

Because what the Apex Motorsports pit wall hadn’t realised was that the Australian sun, blazing low across the circuit, had blinded them completely.

They weren’t seeing the light. They weren’t seeing anything. Because on Supa’s car the light was not red. It was green. Which meant he didn’t have a little boost left. He had 75 percent of it. Roughly 150 seconds of extra power. In other words, the man chasing Ryan wasn’t running out of ammunition. He’d barely started firing.

“How Is He Getting So Close?”

Back in the cockpit Ryan could see the Simpulse car growing larger in his mirrors.

Uncomfortably large. “How is he getting so close??” Ryan shouted over the radio.

The engineer, sounding about as confident as a weather forecast in Scotland, replied:

“It must be the slipstream.”

Which had exactly the same energy as the famous Ferrari radio message: “Must be the water.”

Except this wasn’t slipstream. This was boost. And Supa began testing the door.

Once down Conrod Straight. Again the next lap. And again after that. Each time he crept closer, threatening a move but never quite committing. Ryan defended firmly, positioning the car exactly where it needed to be. For three laps the two danced around each other at 300 km/h. And then came lap 47 of 48.

The Moment Everything Exploded

Supa decided he’d had enough. Rather than attacking down the straight where Ryan expected it, he chose the one place guaranteed to cause maximum confusion - Turn 1. Flat-out approach. Heavy braking. And absolutely not the place you expect someone to dive for glory on the penultimate lap. Ryan turned in normally. Supa did not. The Simpulse car launched up the inside with the commitment of a man who had decided subtlety was overrated. Ryan saw him at the last possible moment. Too late.

The two cars tangled, sliding helplessly into the gravel outside Turn 1.

Ryan’s Apex machine bounced into the wall with a dull, expensive crunch.

Supa? Supa simply drove away. His car completely intact. If this was a crime drama, it would be described as fleeing the scene.

The Sharks Arrive

Ryan managed to rejoin the track, but the car was wounded. Very wounded. Front damage. Rear damage. Aerodynamics that now resembled modern art.

Behind him, two drivers who had spent the entire race quietly minding their own business suddenly realised something extraordinary. Second place was available.

Riccardo Ekro arrived first, the FoxHound rookie sensing opportunity like a shark smelling blood. Right behind him came Alex Strobel in the Scorpio machine.

Strobel passed Ekro almost immediately. Which meant that on the very final lap of the race, the Scorpio driver found himself staring at the back of a heavily damaged Apex car… currently occupying second place. Ryan defended bravely.

But the car simply wasn’t capable. Through the final lap Strobel slipped past, stealing P2 from the wounded once-a-leader. Ekro followed through shortly after.

Ryan, the man who had been leading the race two laps earlier, limped home in fourth.

Moments after crossing the line, Ryan’s voice crackled across the radio.

“He crashed into me… he just crashed into me in Turn 1.”

Which may well be how it felt from inside the cockpit.

But the harsh reality was becoming clear.

A Very Quiet Apex Garage

For the defending champions Apex Motorsports, the result was brutal. No cars on the podium. Not one. Someone eventually found Melmut Harko standing near the garage, staring at the results screen with the same expression a man might wear after discovering termites in the house.

When asked for his reaction, Harko sighed.

“Bathurst,” he said, “is a wonderful place for learning lessons.”

What sort of lessons?

“That if you crash twice, you will not win. And if you crash once… you will also probably not win.”

Did he blame Supa for the Turn 1 incident?

Harko shrugged.

“In racing there are two types of drivers. Those who leave space… and those who create problems.”

Which category was Supa?

“We will see what the stewards think.”

He paused.

“Next race will be different.”

The interviewer pointed out that the championship now heads away from Australia. Harko nodded slowly. A small grim smile appeared.

“Perhaps our season must now be turned upside down.”

Which, given that the race had taken place in Australia - famously Down Under - felt like the most unintentionally appropriate metaphor of the afternoon.

The Winner… For Now

Out front, however, a very different story was unfolding.

Supa, the man who had never stood on a podium in SSF before, crossed the line in first place. He didn’t celebrate wildly. He didn’t shout.

Because everyone knew one thing. The lap 47 incident was under investigation.

So while Supa sat in the winner’s chair, the champagne remained suspiciously unopened.

Behind him Alex Strobel had delivered a brilliant P2 for Scorpio eSports. Riccardo Ekro salvaged the day for FoxHound, finishing third in an impressive debut performance. And somewhere further down pit lane, the defending champions were packing their equipment and quietly wondering how a race that looked comfortably under control had somehow turned into absolute chaos.

But then again… This is Scorpio Super Formula.

And chaos, as we are beginning to learn, is very much part of the entertainment.

What Bathurst Really Did to the Championship

Now that the dust has settled on Mount Panorama, and the gravel has finally stopped falling out of several very expensive racing cars, the paddock is beginning to realise something deeply unsettling. Bathurst didn’t just start the season. It blew it wide open. Because before Australia, the story looked neat and tidy. Too neat, in fact. The reigning champions Apex Motorsports were supposed to dominate again. S2K was the benchmark. Ryan the reliable wingman. Larson the occasional nuclear weapon capable of flattening the field when he felt like it.

Everyone else? Supporting cast. Except Bathurst took that script, folded it into a paper airplane, and threw it directly into a wall at Turn 1. And now the paddock is buzzing.

Let’s begin with Apex Motorsports, because if you listen carefully around the paddock you’ll hear whispers that sound suspiciously like politics.

Last year the team looked united, efficient, unstoppable. This year… people are starting to talk. Because two years in a row at Bathurst, S2K has found the wall in Turn 2. That might simply be coincidence. Motorsport is full of coincidences. But it also means Ryan, the quietly relentless one, keeps inheriting opportunities.

And that smirk he had when the lead fell into his lap? Oh yes - people noticed.

There are already murmurs floating through the paddock that Ryan is no longer interested in playing the loyal teammate. The man had more podiums than anyone last season, remember. Consistency wins championships, and consistency is Ryan’s favourite hobby.

One engineer from a rival team was overheard muttering in the paddock café:

“If Apex keep giving Ryan chances like that, sooner or later he’s going to take the whole thing.”

Another rumour, and this one is deliciously dramatic, suggests Melmut Harko has already scheduled a “discussion” with the drivers before Fuji. Now when Harko schedules a discussion, it’s rarely about improving team morale.

And then there is Supa. Up until now he was the sort of driver commentators described using phrases like “solid performer” or “quietly impressive.” Which is motorsport code for “not the headline act.” Bathurst changed that overnight.

Suddenly Supa is the man who won the race, shoved his nose into a championship fight, and left half the paddock arguing about whether his Turn 1 move was heroic… or slightly outrageous. And gossip is already doing what gossip does best. Some say Supa knew exactly what he was going to do and deliberately waited until the penultimate lap to spring the trap. Others say he simply thought, “Well, if I don’t try it now, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”

One particularly cynical mechanic suggested something else entirely:

“At Bathurst you either make the move… or you spend the flight home wondering why you didn’t.”

Whatever the truth, Supa has gone from background character to championship troublemaker in the space of about three corners. And people in the paddock love a troublemaker.

The Fuji Problem

And now, just to make everything even more unpredictable, the championship heads to Fuji. Which would be interesting enough on its own. But Fuji has a reputation. It rains there. A lot. Which means all the tidy little conclusions people drew after Bathurst may become completely useless. The drivers who looked calm in Australia might panic. The drivers who looked average might suddenly become unstoppable. And somewhere in the middle of it all, someone will almost certainly attempt a move that makes the entire pit wall collectively scream.

The Paddock Right Now

So this is the current state of Scorpio Super Formula: The champions are irritated. The newcomers are dangerous. The favourites are confused. And the gossip is spreading faster than tyre marbles on a hot racetrack. Mechanics are loading equipment into trucks. Drivers are boarding flights to Japan while pretending they’re not already replaying Bathurst in their heads. And somewhere, in a quiet garage, engineers are staring at weather forecasts that include the word “rain.”

Which means one thing is almost guaranteed.

If Bathurst started the drama… Fuji might turn the entire championship into a full-blown storm.

A Quiet Reminder from the Past

Exactly 15 years ago today, March 8th, 2011, the man who now runs Scorpio eSports and organizes the Scorpio Super Formula championship, Ivan Taranov, endured a crash that changed everything. Testing a Formula Renault at Croft Circuit in the UK, Ivan’s throttle stuck open in Turn 1. The car shot off the track, leapt over the gravel trap, and flipped upside down. Traveling at roughly 170 kph, he slammed into the barrier headfirst - there was no halo back then - and the cockpit was pierced by suspension components. The impact completely wrote the car off, caused brain bleeding to the driver, and left him with severe neck and back injuries.

Ivan fought back, returning to racing with Scorpio Motorsport, winning races, and even stepping into GP3 with the Force India Young Driver Academy. But the human body has limits. The G-forces were merciless to a forever-wounded driver, and his promising career was cruelly curtailed. It’s a stark reminder that motorsport, even with today’s advancements, remains dangerous. Safety improvements like carbon-fiber survival cells, halo devices, and better helmets can only do so much - the line between glory and disaster is thinner than we used to think. Ivan himself often said before rolling out of the pits:

“Every time you go out on track, enjoy it - it may be your last time.”

And yet, in a strange, almost ironic twist, Ivan still hasn’t fully recovered. Walking for more than 30 minutes is a struggle, and he can barely turn his head to the left. Which, naturally, explains why he has never attempted ovals in the simulator.

Racing is dangerous, exhilarating, and completely unpredictable… and in Ivan’s case, the consequences last a lifetime.

It’s serious. It’s sobering. And yet, somehow, it’s also just the sort of story that keeps this sport deliciously alive.

See you on track soon.

Faithfully yours,

The Group of Anonymous Journalists.