D1 Lights 2026 Rd.9 & 10 Tsukuruma Results: Nakagawa Wins Both

Naotaka Nakagawa (中川尚隆, #11) won both D1 Lights rounds at Tsukuruma Circuit Nasu (Tochigi) on 10 and 11 October 2026. On Saturday he won Round 9 by beating championship leader Junichi Asano (浅野潤一, #19) in a final that went to a rerun, and on Sunday he won Round 10 by beating Kosuke Yoshida (吉田紘祐, #55), his fourth win of the season. Asano scored 21 and 4 for the weekend, and D1’s official Round 10 report says his lead is now 16 points. We checked every number here on the official pages on 14 October 2026: the two round reports carry full result tables, while the official ranking page still ended at Round 8 that day, so the post-Tsukuruma totals below are our own arithmetic.

Who won Round 9, and how?

Tsukuruma had not hosted D1 Lights since 2022, and the judged corners were new. The official report says the layout punished big angle: a sharp flick into corner 1, a long run to the gentle corner 2, and a drift that had to be kept alive to corner 3 before a transition into corner 4. Drivers who threw on maximum angle at corner 1 ran out of drift; drivers who went in soft lost points for the initiation. The surface was dry.

Naoki Ando (安藤直輝, #65) in the C33 Laurel was the only driver over 98 on run 1 and then went higher, 98.70, for solo P1. Nakagawa was second on 97.80 and Kiyoto Yogi (與儀清登, #31) third on 97.35; the cut fell at 96.50, and third-placed Daisuke Seto (瀬戸大輔, #66) and fourth-placed Koji Yanagi (柳晃司, #16) in the championship both missed it.

In the Top 16 only Yogi and Jun Kitazawa (北澤淳, #6) upset the solo order by losing. Nakagawa beat his former teammate Genki Mogami (最上弦毅, #36). Asano, eighth in solo, found pace in the battles and beat Ren Asami (浅見廉, #88), who had made his first semi-final, when Asami’s drift went shallow at corner 1 chasing and straightened on the exit leading. Nakagawa beat Tsuyoshi Igarashi (五十嵐剛, #51) in the other semi. The final was Asano against Nakagawa: Nakagawa led after run 1 when Asano missed part of a zone, Asano got closer than Nakagawa on run 2 to force a rerun, and in the rerun Nakagawa chased tight through the last corner while Asano’s angle went shallow deep in corner 1. The report puts the gap at 37 points after Saturday.

Yogi, Kitazawa and Noritaka Suguro (須黒典高, #44) were classified ninth to eleventh.

Who won Round 10, and how?

Sunday used the same course, so the judges wanted the same things, but rubber on the surface changed the feel and several of Saturday’s top qualifiers went out in solo: Asami, Uemura and Kitazawa all missed the Top 16, while Seto and Yanagi came through. Igarashi, eleventh the day before, scored 98.25, and Mogami then matched it; the regulation tie-break on second-best runs gave Igarashi his first solo win, 97.10 against 96.90, and the lead in the separate solo-run ranking. Ando was third on 97.95. Nakagawa qualified tenth and Asano thirteenth.

Asano could have clinched the title on Sunday. Instead he met Yoshida in the third Top 16 pairing, could not close on the FD3S chasing, and was marked for leaving a zone leading. Out. That left the maths to Nakagawa, who beat Mogami again in the Top 8, helped by a Mogami mistake, and the title fight went to the finale. The semis went to Yoshida over Yanagi, who understeered badly on entry on run 2 after leading well on run 1, and to Nakagawa over Ando, who said afterwards he was on used tyres with no new set left. In the final Yoshida led first, fast through the opening corners, then ran completely off the course at corner 4; Nakagawa drove his lead run clean and won. Yoshida said it was the first time he had won a Top 16 battle.

Hayato Suzuki, Koki Nishiyama (西山昂希, #83) and Makoto Tanimoto (谷本真人, #58) were classified ninth to eleventh; Asano was thirteenth, worth 4 points.

Which battles do the official reports describe?

Those are the only pairings the reports name; the full brackets are in the live archives below.

Who leads the championship after Round 10?

Two tables, because the official one was behind on the day we checked. First, the official ranking page as it stood on 14 October 2026, which ends at Round 8:

Second, our arithmetic: those totals plus the points in the official Round 9 and Round 10 result tables, 25 for a win down to 1 for sixteenth. D1 has not published this table, but the 16-point gap matches what its Round 10 report states.

With one round and 25 points left, only Asano and Nakagawa can finish on top, which is also how the official report describes it. Nakagawa needs the win at Mobara with Asano ninth or lower; an eighth place or better for Asano settles it.

What the drivers said

In the official interviews Nakagawa said the course ran exactly as he had practised it on a simulator, and that in the battles his only rule was no mistakes leading. Asano put his Round 9 final down to contact in zone 2 of the rerun, after which he could not keep the drift alive. Yoshida said he had simply got too excited on his lead run and initiated somewhere he never does.

Where can you watch the replay?

▶ D1 Lights Series Rd.9 Tsukuruma — Saturday live archive (土曜版生放送) D1GP MOVIE CHANNEL · official channel click to load from youtube

▶ D1 Lights Series Rd.10 Tsukuruma — Sunday live archive (日曜版生放送) D1GP MOVIE CHANNEL · official channel click to load from youtube

Next round: Mobara, Sunday 13 December

The finale is a single day, Round 11 at Mobara Twin Circuit (Chiba) on Sunday 13 December 2026. On 14 October the official round page listed the venue, address and date and nothing else: no ticket prices, no timetable. Tsukuruma’s tickets went on sale through Lawson Ticket on 24 September, 16 days before the event, at ¥4,400 in advance and ¥6,000 at the gate. If Mobara follows the same lead time, its tickets would appear in late November, but nothing had been announced as of 14 October. How that sale worked, and the demand-taxi leg to Tsukuruma, is in our Tsukuruma tickets and access guide. The circuit itself, a short trip from Tokyo, is in the Mobara Twin Circuit guide.

The part that stalls from abroad is the ticket, not the trip. The standard Lawson Ticket e-ticket lives in a Japanese-language app with phone verification, and D1 warns that if the advance allocation sells out there is no gate sale.

How the top four got here is in our D1 Lights Rd.7 and Rd.8 Bihoku results. The Mobara date, and every other D1 Lights, D1 Grand Prix and Formula Drift Japan round still to run in 2026, is on the event calendar, rechecked against the series pages each month.