The rule quirk that cost Lotterer two single-seater titles

By rights, Andre Lotterer should be a three-time champion in Super Formula. During his 15-year stint in the championship between 2003 and 2017, the three-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner amassed 24 wins - a tally only behind Kazuyoshi Hoshino and Satoshi Motoyama - and, according to any normal measure, accrued the best results over the season three times.

Yet the record books shows that the German, now a leading light in Formula E with Porsche, has only the 2011 title to his name. So what happened to the other two?

Championships won on countback are rare, but not unheard of in motorsport. Just ask Juan Pablo Montoya (1999), Sam Hornish Jr (2006) or Scott Dixon (2015, at Montoya's expense), who all picked up IndyCar titles having drawn level on points with their respective title rivals.

But losing a championship despite having the overall stronger set of results? No, it's not Bernie Ecclestone's hare-brained 'medal' system, but Super Formula's rather bizarre tiebreak rules. On no fewer than four other occasions, Lotterer was classified as the runner-up, but in 2004 and 2013 he was - according to conventional countback rules used everywhere else - the rightful champion.

In 2004, Lotterer had emerged as a serious contender after a promising rookie campaign in which he managed three podiums and a pole position at Sugo. Despite two non-finishes, the Nakakima Racing man headed into the final race at Suzuka with a four-point buffer over Irishman Richard Lyons, driving for the DoCoMo Team Dandelion squad. Also in contention was future Super Aguri Formula 1 driver Yuji Ide, the Team Impul driver seven points back from Lotterer with 10 available.

Qualifying didn't go according to plan for Lotterer, as he managed only eighth while Lyons grabbed pole, his fifth that year out of nine races.

"I didn't qualify well," Lotterer acknowledges. "We were a bit [on the] back foot in terms of engines; there were two tuners, Ogawa and Tomei [Nakajima Racing was using Ogawa-tuned engines], and we were not so quick."

Lyons led the early part of the race, soaking up pressure from Ide's Impul team-mate Benoit Treluyer before the pair pitted together at the end of lap 19 of 46. But a slow tyre change for Lyons allowed Treluyer to get ahead, and ultimately take the win.

In 2004, the rules dictated if two drivers finished the year level on points, the driver that was ahead in the final race would be given the higher position in the standings. With Lotterer outside of the points, Lyons needed just to draw level on points with his adversary to take the title

Lotterer meanwhile was struggling, having dropped to 13th place at the start. He'd recovered to the fringes of the points when he got bottled up behind Motoyama, who in turn had dropped out of the podium battle with a slow stop. But he could not find a way by.

"I was coming back in the race and I was getting close to passing Motoyama, and I had one opportunity," recalls Lotterer. "I tried to go around the outside at Turn 1, but it didn't work out because he was blocking. And then a bit later I tried again but I made a mistake, I went on the grass a bit, and that was it. I didn't put it together that weekend."

In 2004, the rules dictated if two drivers finished the year level on points, the driver that was ahead in the final race would be given the higher position in the standings. With Lotterer seventh and just outside of the points, Lyons needed just to draw level on points with his adversary to take the title, which meant finishing third.

Having lost out in the pits to Treluyer, Lyons had to turn his attention to fending off a charging Ide in the final part of the race, as the Japanese driver overturned a 12-second deficit to the second-place man after passing Juichi Wakisaka for third. With three laps to go, Ide forced his way by up into second at Turn 1, leaving Lyons to complete the podium.

Lotterer and Lyons both finished the year on 33 points, with Lyons ahead in the finale and therefore declared champion. But, using a normal countback system, it would have been Lotterer that got the nod.

Incredibly, both he and Lyons had two wins, one second place, one third and one fourth each, so Lotterer's seventh place at Suzuka would have actually swung it (Lyons' next best results were a trio of eighth places).

We'll never know if Lyons would have been able to resist Ide's charge had the quirky rule not applied and second been required for the title. But another interesting twist in this tale is that Ide himself could have been champion - that is, if having moved up to second place, he had been gifted the win by team-mate Treluyer. But, to the Frenchman's pleasure, the order from the Impul team to move aside never arrived, even though it cost Hoshino's squad the drivers' title.

"If I would have let Ide pass, he would have won the championship," says Treluyer. "But if I were in his situation, I would have not asked or wanted to win a championship like that. I was expecting the team to ask me [to let Ide through] about it but they didn't. So that day I realised that I was really in a team which shared my values."

Given the notoriety that Ide achieved in his disastrously ill-fated four-race F1 stint with Super Aguri in 2006 - when his Superlicense was revoked by the FIA following an accident with Christijan Albers at Imola - it's strange to think that he came so close to Formula Nippon title glory. But Treluyer doesn't have fond memories of sharing a garage with Ide.

"My feeling was not really good with Ide because he didn't share anything," continues Treluyer, who took each of his three Le Mans victories with Lotterer and Marcel Fassler. "Before I was with Motoyama, which was really good and we really built something together in 2003. With Ide I felt like he was taking everything I could give and never giving me anything in return and hiding many things.

"This was not my preferred way of working and I didn't really appreciate that. If we had worked together, one of us could have won the championship. But we know where his career went after that, so it's not a big deal for me!"

Nine years later, Lotterer was in a very different phase of his career. In 2013, he was at the peak of his powers as an Audi factory driver, with two Le Mans 24 Hours wins under his belt as well as the '11 Nippon title.

That title success came despite Lotterer being forced to skip the second round of the year at Autopolis because it clashed with Le Mans scrutineering. Winning all but one of the remaining six races ensured that nobody else had a chance of catching him.

But in 2013, the schedule for what was now known as Super Formula featured two FIA World Endurance Championship clashes. Not only did Lotterer and his Audi WEC stablemate Loic Duval miss the Suzuka season opener to take part in the Silverstone WEC round, they also had to sit out the double-header finale at the same track to race in Shanghai.

In the intervening four rounds, Lotterer won twice and finished second twice, picking up 37 points. Duval was his nearest challenger on 31, but because he had to miss the finale as well, he was no threat. The only man that could deny the German was Mugen's Naoki Yamamoto.

Yamamoto was awarded the 2013 title on the basis that his combined score in the two-part Suzuka finale, 13 points, was better than Lotterer's best single-round score of 11 at Autopolis

Lotterer picks up the story: "I went into the last round with a 13-point lead [over Yamamoto] and there were 18 points to grab, and Yamamoto got both pole positions, which were worth a point each. Then he got an equal amount of points to me [winning Race 1 and finishing third in Race 2], and because I wasn't there [he got the title].

"I flew back to Japan because the WEC race was on Saturday and I was watching it live in Suzuka on Sunday. It was very painful, I watched it unfold in front of me. It was all good until Joao Paulo de Oliveira went off at Degner [in Race 2], Yamamoto gained a position and that was it."

The rule that denied Lotterer that day was actually slightly different to the one that had cost him so dearly nine years earlier. Yamamoto was awarded the title on the basis that his combined score in the two-part Suzuka finale, 13 points, was better than Lotterer's best single-round score of 11 at Autopolis.

It was hardly a fair situation, given that the finale was the only round where 18 points, rather than 11, were up for grabs. Had a normal countback system been in place, Lotterer would have been crowned on the basis of having won two races to Yamamoto's one.

This arcane regulation remained in place until last season - and in a twist of irony, it came very close to paying Lotterer back for his 2013 defeat.

In 2016, Lotterer went into the Suzuka finale, again a two-parter, as the rank outsider. A pair of second places in the two races left him just three points adrift of Yuji Kunimoto in the final reckoning, and in the second race he lost out to future McLaren F1 driver Stoffel Vandoorne by a mere seven tenths.

Given Lotterer didn't win a race that year and Kunimoto won twice, the extra three points he would have gained by finding a way by Vandoorne wouldn't have been enough in normal circumstances. But, Super Formula's rules would have given him the crown, because he would have scored 12 points at Suzuka, besting Kunimoto's best single-round tally of nine.

As it was, Lotterer bowed out of Super Formula after the 2017 season to focus on WEC and Formula E, with only one title to his name. And it's something he has no regrets about.

"Especially [in 2004] it was my second year there, I was surprised to be in the fight because everyone there knows what they are doing," he reflects. "But if I would have won the title, maybe I would have done something else and maybe I wouldn't be where I am now.

"[Losing the title] made me stay in Japan and do a good career there, so who knows? It was a pity for my CV, but it wasn't like losing Le Mans or something."