Photo: Dutch Photo Agency/Red Bull Content Pool
Igor Fraga has become the third international driver to sign up to race in Japan’s Super Formula Lights series this year as he joins B-MAX Racing’s line-up.
Travel and quarantine restrictions introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic made it harder for drivers from overseas to race in Japan, but with those having been eased there are now more drivers heading there to race in single-seaters.
In SF Lights, a Formula 3-level series that uses the same Dallara 320 car as Euroformula, TOM’S has signed Italian Enzo Trulli and B-MAX have Brazilian racer Fraga and Spaniard David Vidales.
The 20-year-old Fraga last raced in single-seaters in 2020, when he was Toyota Racing Series champion and then came 24th in FIA Formula 3 as a Red Bull junior. Prior to that he had finished on the podium in Brazilian F3, had been NACAM Formula 4 runner-up and won in USF2000 and the Formula Regional European Championship.
He first established himself as a star of mini karting and then Esports, winning the Gran Turismo World Series and the McLaren Shadow Project as well as competing in Formula 1’s official Esports series. He has represented Gran Turismo since then and is now also the official Esports ambassador for Japan’s top-level Super Formula series.
That led to him then conducting an SF test at the end of last year, having been out of real-world racing for two years, and last month he secured a seat in Super GT’s secondary GT300 class with Arnage Racing where he will share a Lexus RC F GT3 with fellow SF Lights racer Yuga Furutani and Toyota’s reigning FRegional Japanese champion Miki Koyama.
Alongside the announcement of Fraga, B-MAX also revealed that Dragon and Nobuhiro Imada will continue to race its Masters class cars in SF Lights and contend for Independent Cup points in Japanese F4.
Dragon has been racing full-time in SF Lights since 2013, and scored his first point on his 128th start in 2020. He has scored one more point in the 46 races since then.