Pierre Gasly would have been expecting to race this weekend one way or another, but for a while we didn’t know whether it’d be in F1 or in Super Formula.
Eventually it was decided he’d go to Japan to try and win the championship. Probably because ‘Pierre Gasly: 2017 Super Formula champion’ would look better on his CV than ‘Pierre Gasly: 12th place, 2017 US GP’.
Gasly was just half a point behind championship leader Hiroaki Ishiura heading into the finale, and the showdown between the pair of them was set up nicely.
However qualifying was so wet that it had to be abandoned, and with the weather expected to get even worse on Sunday, both of the races have been cancelled – and they won’t be rescheduled. What a bummer.
That means the standings after the previous round will stand, giving Ishiura the title by half a point from Gasly, with Felix Rosenqvist third.
It’s a sucky situation all-round, as nobody likes to see a championship decided like that, and Gasly is going to be left twiddling his thumbs on a weekend where he should have been racing something, somewhere.
I bet Brendon Hartley is really, really gutted for him.
