D1 NEXT Middle West 2026 Rd.2 YZ Results: Kojima Wins from Seed 16

Kojima (小嶋告明, #11) won D1 NEXT Middle West Series 2026 Round 2 at YZ Circuit East (Gifu) on Sunday 24 May 2026, beating Kawase (河瀬将貴, #48) in the final. He did it from the 16th and last seed in the tandem bracket, having scraped into it by one place, and his first battle was against the man who had topped both qualifying stages. Suzuki (鈴木孝則, #6) was classified third and Nagao (長尾健太郎, #7) fourth, from 60 names on the first qualifying sheet. This report was written up on 7 September 2026 from D1’s official post of 25 May 2026, and every figure in it was checked on the official pages on 7 Sep 2026.

D1 publishes D1 NEXT results in Japanese only, with no romanised entry list, so the readings we use are ours and unconfirmed by the organiser; the kanji sits beside every name so you can search it. Two pairs of near-identical names run through this round and we have kept the kanji on both: 小嶋告明, the winner, and 小島康寛, who went out in the Top 16, are both Kojima; 河瀬将貴, the runner-up, and 川瀬羚也, beaten in the Top 16, are both Kawase and are not related.

Who won Round 2, and how?

D1 NEXT is the open-entry regional tier of the D1 ladder, below D1 Lights and D1 Grand Prix; our D1 NEXT explainer sets out how the six 2026 series fit together. Middle West is the Chubu one, run by C.O.S. Tokai, and this was its second visit of the year to the hill circuit at YZ in Gifu, judged by Utsumi and Yokoi (内海彰乃・横井昌志).

The day ran in three stages, as it had in March. A first qualifying (予選, yosen) ranked 60 entries and sent 32 through. Those 32 ran the solo judged runs (単走, tanso) that seed the bracket; D1 publishes the order but no scores for either stage, so we will not invent any. Kato (加藤諒, #15) topped both, the only driver to do so. Kojima was fourth in the first qualifying and then 16th in the solo runs — the last driver through the cut.

That put him against Kato in the opening tandem battle, and he won it. From there came Osada (長田健太郎, #3) in the Top 8, Suzuki in the semi-final and Kawase in the final: four wins from the bottom of the ladder. The official graphic records only who won each pairing, not the judges’ calls, so that is all we can tell you about how they looked.

The other story is at the top of the March sheet. Nomura (野村勇貴, #1), who won Round 1 here in March, qualified 18th and then finished 30th of 32 in the solo runs; he scored nothing. Tsuchiya (土屋理功, #4), the man who had topped the solo runs in March, was 17th this time and missed the bracket by a single place. One practical note if you are cross-referencing the two rounds: the car numbers changed between them — Nomura ran #26 in March and #1 in May — so match drivers by kanji rather than by number.

The bracket: which battles decided it?

The bracket is published as a graphic rather than as text, so here is how we checked our reading of it. The seeding is the standard 16-car ladder off the solo-run order — 1 v 16, 8 v 9, 4 v 13, 5 v 12 and so on — and every loser’s points in the official table match the stage and the seed exactly: 13, 12, 11 and 10 to the Top 8 losers seeded 2, 8, 12 and 14, then 8 down to 1 to the Top 16 losers in seed order. Graphic and points table agree, so there is no TBC here.

Low seeds did most of the damage. Besides Kojima from 16th, Yoshimura came from 12th to put out Saito, and Ota from 14th to put out third seed Kawase (川瀬羚也). Of the top four seeds, only Suzuki reached the semi-finals.

Where the Middle West table stands after two rounds

D1’s series page lists dates, venues and organisers for all six 2026 D1 NEXT regions but publishes no running points table, so there is no official Middle West order to quote. The table below is our own addition of the two official round sheets, not the organiser’s:

A dash means the driver was on the entry sheet but outside the scoring 16: Nomura in May, Kawase in March. The arithmetic shows a season nobody has run away with — five drivers within five points, and the March winner already sixth. Round 1 went to Nomura over Saito and has its own Round 1 report.

Where the season goes next

Three rounds are still to come. Rd.3 on Sunday 20 September 2026 is the only Middle West round away from YZ, at Owara Circuit in Toyama, and it is the one to watch if the table is going to move.

Then the series comes home twice, and these are the dates you can still plan a trip around: Rd.4 at YZ Circuit East on Sunday 1 November 2026 and Rd.5 there on Sunday 13 December. Admission is ¥1,500, or ¥1,000 for YZ and Owara members, with junior-high age and under free — and at YZ that gate fee is charged to everyone on site, drivers included. The money is not what stops people. There is no station: Nagoya is the base city and the last leg is a car, as our YZ Circuit East guide and our Tokai and Nagoya track roundup both spell out. YZ’s own track days are booked by email and its month grid does not always carry the D1 NEXT day, while the competition entry and the running order both live with C.O.S. Tokai, in Japanese.

Both YZ dates and the Owara round sit on our drift event calendar, rechecked against the official pages every month; D1’s own series table says dates may change.