D1 NEXT Middle West 2026 Rd.3 Owara Results: Osada Wins from 24th

Osada (長田健太郎, #1) won D1 NEXT Middle West Series 2026 Round 3 at Owara Circuit (Toyama) on Sunday 20 September 2026, beating Imada (今田貴也, #32) in the final for 25 points. He got there the hard way: 24th of 45 names in the first qualifying, then 4th in the solo runs, which put him into the 16-car tandem bracket as the 4th seed. Takabatake (高畠伊佐夫, #36) was classified third and Yoshimura (吉村旭人, #6) fourth. Every figure below was read off D1’s official result post and its 2026 ranking page, checked on 23 September 2026.

D1 publishes D1 NEXT names in Japanese only, so the romanised names are our readings, given with the kanji. Two pairs need that kanji to stay apart here. Kojima (児嶋郁弥), who topped the solo runs, is a different surname from the Kojima (小嶋告明) who won Round 2. Suzuki (鈴木孝則, #2) and Suzuki (鈴木鈴子, #25) both made the bracket and both lost in the Top 16.

Who won Round 3, and how?

D1 NEXT is the open-entry regional tier of the D1 ladder, and our D1 NEXT explainer sets out how the six 2026 series fit together. Middle West is run by C.O.S. Tokai, and Round 3 was its one trip of the year away from YZ Circuit East, north over the mountains to Owara in Toyama. The judges were Utsumi and Kubokawa (内海彰乃・久保川澄花).

The day ran in three stages. A first qualifying (予選, yosen) ranked 45 entries and sent 32 through, and Morita (森田英幸, #41) topped it in a 180SX. Those 32 then ran the solo judged runs (単走, tanso) that seed the bracket, where Kojima (児嶋郁弥, #29) was quickest in a Skyline from Takabatake and Yun Jun-heum (ユンジュンフム, #9). D1 publishes the order of both stages but no scores, so we will not invent any.

Osada’s first qualifying run put him 24th, close enough to the cut that a worse one would have ended his day at the first stage. The solo runs changed everything: 4th, one row behind the three drivers who had set the pace. From the 4th seed he beat Suzuki (鈴木鈴子), then Kawase (川瀬羚也, #10), then Yoshimura in the semi-final, then Imada in the final. Four battles, 25 points, and a round that had looked lost by mid-morning.

Six of the 45 entries were overseas or mixed-heritage drivers, which answers a question we get constantly: Yun Jun-heum, Hayden Feeney (フィニー ヘイデン, #31), Idogawa Nicolas (井戸川ニコラス, #7), Hara Bruno (原ブルーノ, #26), Sochibetsu Nikita (ソチベツニキタ, #38) and Cezar Ishikawa (#20), the only one of the six D1 prints in Latin script. Yun Jun-heum and Feeney both made the bracket and both scored. Our overseas drivers page tracks who is running where.

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 ladder is the standard 16-car seeding off the solo-run order, and every loser’s points in the official table match the stage and the seed exactly. Graphic and points table agree, so there is nothing left as TBC here.

The top of the seeding barely survived first contact. Kojima (児嶋郁弥), fastest in the solo runs, drew the 16th seed Yoshimura in the opening battle and lost it. Third seed Yun Jun-heum lost his to Hario (針尾良治, #12) from the 14th seed. Of the top three seeds only Takabatake reached the semi-finals, and he lost that to Imada, who had been 2nd in the first qualifying and 11th in the solo runs. The graphic records who won each pairing and nothing else, so that is all we can tell you about how the battles looked.

Where does the Middle West table stand after Round 3?

One change since our Round 2 report: D1 now runs a cumulative 2026 D1 NEXT ranking page, which it did not in May. The Middle West section of it is filled only through Round 2. Here it is as D1 publishes it, official and unaltered:

Round 3 is not in that table. The next one is ours, not D1’s: it adds the official Round 3 points sheet to the official Round 2 standings. Treat it as arithmetic you can check rather than as a classification, because D1 has not published one.

A dash means the driver scored nothing in that column. Saito and Kishiume were both at Owara and both missed the bracket in the solo runs, Saito 19th and Kishiume 20th of 32. Nomura was on the entry sheet too and went out earlier, 37th of 45 in the first qualifying. Kojima (小嶋告明), who won Round 2, did not appear at Owara at all. Two rounds are left, both at YZ, and 46 points are still available to one driver.

What the drivers said

D1’s own D1 NEXT account posted nothing from Owara, but two drivers did. The first account carries no name, and the results in it belong to exactly one entry on the official sheet: 9th in the first qualifying, 1st in the solo runs, out in the opening tandem battle, 9th overall is Kojima (児嶋郁弥, #29).

The second is from the Saturday. Owara runs an official practice day the day before a D1 NEXT round, and if you are planning to watch one of these, that is the day the paddock is open and nobody is under pressure.

Where does the season go next?

The Middle West series leaves Toyama now and finishes at home. Round 4 runs at YZ Circuit East in Gifu on Sunday 1 November 2026 and Round 5 there on Sunday 13 December, both confirmed on C.O.S. Tokai’s own series page and on D1’s 2026 series table on 23 September 2026. D1 marks its dates as provisional. Admission is ¥1,500, or ¥1,000 for YZ and Owara members, with junior-high age and under free, and at both venues that fee is charged to everyone on site, competitors included.

The money is not the obstacle. Owara has no station: Toyama is the base city and the last leg is a car, as our Owara Circuit guide sets out along with the Japanese-only briefing rule that catches first-timers, and YZ is the same story from Nagoya. For either venue the two things you actually need in the last week, the entry list and the running order, live with C.O.S. Tokai in Japanese rather than on D1’s site.

Both remaining Middle West dates and the rest of the 2026 season sit on our drift event calendar, rechecked against the official pages every month, and the venues themselves are in the track directory.