D1 NEXT Central 2026 Rd.3 Mobara Results: Yoshinobu Shinbo Wins

Yoshinobu Shinbo (新保佳延, #9) won D1 NEXT Central Series 2026 Round 3 at Mobara Twin Circuit (Chiba) on Sunday 13 September 2026, beating Rohab Khan (#40) in the final for 25 points to Khan’s 21. Jun Kitazawa (北澤淳, #3) was third and top qualifier Hiroki Komuro (小室弘樹, #56) fourth. D1’s official series ranking has not added this round yet, so no official points leader after Round 3 exists; we checked every figure here on the official pages on 25 Sep 2026.

Who won Round 3, and how?

The Central series came back to Chiba four months after Round 2, and this time the track ran the normal way round. Mobara Twin Circuit organised the day itself, and its D1 NEXT page flags Round 3 as 正回り, the forward layout, where May’s Round 2 ran reversed. The judges were Kuniaki Takahashi (高橋邦明) and Takashi Haruyama (春山隆). If you are new to this tier, our D1 NEXT explainer shows where it sits under D1 Lights and D1 Grand Prix, and the venue itself is covered in our Mobara Twin Circuit guide.

Thirty drivers appear on the solo (tansō, 単走) sheet, ranked on their best run. Komuro topped it on 98.6, the same driver who qualified second at Round 2. Shinbo was second on 98.2 and Shunta Noguchi (野口駿太, #43) third on 97.95. The cut sat at 24th, where Kazuya Endo (遠藤和哉, #18) made it on 96.65.

Shinbo then did it the straightforward way. As the second seed he skipped the opening round, beat Naoki Miyazaki (宮崎尚紀, #26) and Tsuyoshi Nakagawa (中川剛志, #48), who won Round 2, then Kitazawa in the semi-final and Khan in the final. Khan took the longer road. He qualified 13th on 97.15, so he had to win an extra battle in the opening round. He then beat the fourth, fifth and first qualifiers in turn to reach the final.

Car choice changed too. At Round 2 the top five were all Silvias. At Round 3, three of the top five drove JZX90 Mark IIs: Shinbo, Kitazawa and Noguchi.

The bracket: which battles decided it?

Qualifiers 1 to 8 went straight into the Best 16. Qualifiers 9 to 24 fought one opening round for the other eight places.

The biggest seeding upset came first: Endo, last man into the bracket, knocked out the ninth qualifier. Khan’s run through Ishibashi, Asami and Komuro is the one to look for if footage surfaces. D1 published this round in Japanese only, so the Latin spellings are our reading of the kanji, except Rohab Khan, whose name D1 prints in Latin letters. The same name appears in D1 Lights this season, as covered in our D1 Lights Ebisu report.

Championship standings after Round 3

D1’s official ranking page listed the Central series through Round 2 only when we checked on 25 September 2026. This is the official table’s top eight as published.

D1’s Round 3 post lists the points for 16 finishers: 25, 21, 18, 16, 13, 12, 11, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. Opening-round losers score nothing. Adding those official Round 3 points to the official table gives the totals below. This is our arithmetic, not an official standing. We do not know D1’s tiebreak, or whether every round counts.

Nakagawa’s eighth place kept him ahead on our sums. Miyazaki’s opening win was followed by a Best 16 loss to the eventual winner, so he added only 3. Shirakawa, who won Round 1, is not on the Round 3 sheet at all. With two rounds and up to 50 points left, the title is still open.

Next round: Nikko on 17 October

Round 4 is at Nikko Circuit (Tochigi) on Saturday 17 October 2026, and FLUKE runs it rather than the circuit. Entry is ¥19,800 with insurance and tax included, plus ¥2,200 for a provisional D1 licence if you do not hold one. Round 5 closes the season back at Mobara on Sunday 8 November 2026, on the reverse layout. Round 1 at Nikko is in our Rd.1 Nikko report, Round 2 in our Rd.2 Mobara report, and our Nikko Circuit guide covers the venue.

The stuck step for an overseas driver is the entry itself. FLUKE’s form is Japanese only and asks for a Japanese postal code and address. The fee has to be paid in advance by domestic bank transfer or PayPay, with no paying on the day. From ten days before the event, nothing is refunded.

Both remaining dates are on our drift event calendar. Organisers note that dates can change.