D1 Lights 2026 Ebisu Results: Nakagawa Wins Rd.5, Asano Rd.6

Naotaka Nakagawa (中川尚隆, #11) won D1 Lights 2026 Round 5 at Ebisu Circuit (Fukushima) on Saturday 25 July 2026, beating Daisuke Nakamura (中村大介, #79) in the final, and Junichi Asano (浅野潤一, #19) won Round 6 on Sunday 26 July, beating Daisuke Seto (瀬戸大輔, #66). Both days ran wet. Summing the official per-round points, Asano led the championship on 111 after Round 6, 52 clear of Nakagawa on 59, the same gap the official Round 6 report states. This is a backfilled report, written up on 7 September 2026 from D1’s official reports; every score and point below was checked on the official pages on 7 Sep 2026.

Who won Round 5, and how?

D1 Lights is D1’s licensed second tier, and the Ebisu weekend is two full rounds, one a day, on the Nishi (west) course; our Ebisu Circuit guide covers the venue. This year the layout ran in reverse: an uphill run into a right-hand hairpin, then a flat section drawn like the letter α. With rain most of Saturday the judges eased off the clipping zones and scored speed and the sharpness of the initiation and transitions instead. Of 40 entrants, 24 go through to the tandem bracket at Ebisu, with the top eight qualifiers seeded straight into the Best 16.

Nakagawa’s 97.70 was the only solo score above 97; Koji Yanagi (柳晃司, #16) was second on 96.95 and Ren Azami (浅見廉, #88) third on 96.90. By his own account in the official interview, he had crashed heavily in Thursday’s dry practice and his mechanics rebuilt the S15; it was his first solo-run win in years, in his fifth Lights season and his first as a privateer after years with MCR Factory. In the bracket he beat Naoki Ando (安藤直輝, #65), Rohab Khan (#7) and Kazuaki Takeda (竹田和明, #5) before the final. Takeda, fifth in qualifying, had already knocked out points leader Asano in the Best 8 with an aggressive chase run, and the 2025 champion Genki Mogami (最上弦毅, #36), 21st in qualifying, went out in round one to Makoto Tanimoto (谷本真人, #58) on an even call decided on qualifying order, so he left with no tournament points.

In the final Nakagawa led run one with plenty of angle while Nakamura dropped away over the second half, then chased tighter on run two through the section beyond the judges’ stand. Takeda lost momentum committing hard at the hairpin in his semi-final, and Kenichi Nakamura (中村健一, #69) spun there on run two of the other.

Who won Round 6, and how did Asano do it from 11th?

Sunday was wetter, with a stoppage for heavy rain during the solo runs, but scores rose as drivers learned the layout. Seto’s 98.35 was the best of the weekend, set, by his own account, with a broken third gear: he changed the final drive and took the hairpin in second. Nakagawa matched his Saturday 97.70 for second and Yanagi was third on 97.65. Asano’s 96.60 was only 11th, outside the seeds, which meant five battles instead of four.

He won all five: Yoshinao Kurosawa (黒澤由直, #34) in round one, Kensuke Hirata (平田健介, #8), Yanagi, then Nakagawa, who ran wide on a transition in run two of the semi, and Seto in the final, where Seto overran the hairpin on run two after Asano had followed him closely on run one. Asano rated his own tandem day at 60 out of 100 and said his opponents’ mistakes had carried him. Earlier, Daisuke Nakamura, Saturday’s runner-up, lost round one to Mitsuki Ito (伊藤充輝, #32), and Koichi Tani (谷光一, #68), 24th and last through qualifying on both days, beat Mitsunori Ito (伊藤満紀, #90) and then Mogami to reach the Best 8. The result sheet strikes 13th-placed Takeda for a tyre-pressure infringement without moving anyone up.

The official attendance figure for the three days was 782.

Who leads the championship after Round 6?

The official ranking page on d1gp.co.jp had already added Rounds 7 and 8 when we checked on 7 September, so the table below is our arithmetic from the official per-round points, RD.1 to RD.6 columns only. The scale is readable off the table: 25 for a round win, 21 for second, 18 for third, 16 for fourth, down to 1 for 16th, with nothing for a round-one exit.

Nakagawa arrived with 16 points and left second; Mitsunori Ito arrived second on 51 and scored 2; Dhnaram Casey, winner of both Meihan rounds, was not on the Ebisu entry list. Asano scored 11 on Saturday and 25 on Sunday, which is how a 24-point lead became 52. One oddity: the ranking page still credits Takeda with 4 points for Rd.6 despite the struck result. D1 Lights also keeps a separate solo-run ranking; summing its Rd.1–6 columns puts Seto, Yanagi and Igarashi level on 77 with Asano on 76. The series’ own account framed the second half of the season the same way when it published the Bihoku entry list on 1 August:

Where can you watch the replay?

Saturday’s Rd.5 stream is a separate upload on the same channel; the commentary on both is in Japanese.

Where the season went next

The next two rounds were Rd.7 & 8 at Bihoku Highland Circuit (Okayama) on 29–30 August 2026; our Bihoku report picks the championship up from here, and the remaining dates, Tsukuruma Circuit Nasu on 10–11 October and Mobara Twin Circuit on 13 December, are on the event calendar.

If Ebisu itself is the draw, the next D1 weekend on the same Nishi course is D1 Grand Prix Rd.5 & 6, EBISU DRIFT, on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September 2026, with no spectator admission on the Friday practice day. Advance prices ran from ¥6,600 for a B seat to ¥11,000 for an SS seat, but every reserved-seat category was marked 完売, sold out, when we checked on 4 September, two days after general sales opened. That leaves same-day tickets at the gate, ¥8,800–¥14,300 per day, a separate ticket for each day, plus ¥1,000 parking sold on the day only. Our D1 Grand Prix spectator guide covers the seat types, and the Ebisu access article has the four-a-day bus from Nihonmatsu Station.