D1 NEXT Niigata 2026 Rd.1 Maze Results: Stuart Inoue Wins the Opener

Stuart Inoue (スチュアート井上) won D1 NEXT Niigata Series 2026 Round 1 at Nihonkai Maze Circuit (Niigata) on Saturday 18 July 2026, beating Akito Yoshimura (吉村旭人) in the final. Shinohara (篠原百貴) was classified third and Kotaro Koizumi (小泉孝太郎) fourth from a 50-name qualifying sheet, and top qualifier Kazuya Maeda (前田和也), 97.60, went out in the Top 8. The official 2026 D1 NEXT ranking gives Inoue 25 points for the win, 4 clear of Yoshimura. This report was written up on 7 September 2026 from D1’s official post of 22 July, and every figure in it was checked on the official pages on 7 Sep 2026; Round 2 ran on the same circuit the next day and has its own report.

Who won Round 1, and how?

D1 NEXT is the open-entry regional tier of the D1 ladder; where it sits under D1 Lights and D1 Grand Prix is in our D1 NEXT explainer. The Niigata Series is the compact version: two rounds on consecutive days at one circuit, organised by GP Sports, at Maze in Niigata City’s Nishikan Ward, Nihonkai being the Sea of Japan. The sheet carried 50 names: 43 with a score, six marked リタイア, retired, and one listed at the foot without a position.

Qualifying was tansō (単走), two solo judged runs, the better one counting and the second breaking ties. Maeda set 97.60 with a 97.10 backup; Yuichi Ishiguro (石黒雄一) and Inoue both scored 97.50 and were split on second runs, 97.15 to 96.55; fourth, on 97.35, was a driver entered under the nickname 世界の岡ちゃん. The cut fell after 32nd place at 95.50, and the first driver out, SEIKA, missed it by 0.05.

The afternoon was tsuisō (追走), the tandem chase battles that decide the round, in a 32-car bracket seeded first against 32nd. Inoue beat メロンパン藤本 (Q30), Kazuki Asakura (朝倉一樹, Q14), Tsutomu Fujio (藤尾勉, Q11) and then Shinohara (Q7) in the semi-final. Yoshimura, ninth in qualifying, came through 原ブルーノ (Q24) and Kazama (風間光輝, Q25), then put out Maeda in the Top 8 and Koizumi in the semi-final. The official bracket records outcomes, not judges’ scores, so we will not invent them. The upsets: Kazama (Q25) beat Yuto Saito (齋藤優斗, Q8) and Makoto Watanabe (渡辺誠, Q28) beat Kazuki Hayashi (林和樹, Q5) in the Top 32, and Miyuki Kishiume (岸梅美幸, Q18) beat second qualifier Ishiguro in the Top 16 on the way to the Top 8.

The bracket: which battles decided it?

Two names are printed as the official sheet has them: たこやきミフネ and ルーカスサム are katakana entries, and we do not guess at Latin spellings the organiser has not published. Inoue’s is settled by Formula Drift Japan’s 2024 FDJ3 driver list, which carries him as Stuart Inoue, #830.

Who leads the D1 NEXT Niigata Series after Round 1?

D1’s 2026 NEXT ranking page includes Maze, so the Rd.1 column below is a straight transcription of the official points, not our arithmetic: 25 for the win, 21, 18 and 16 for the next three, then 13 down to 1 for 16th, with the losers at each stage in qualifying order.

Ninth to 16th: Ishiguro 8, ルーカスサム 7, たこやきミフネ 6, Asakura 5, Matsunaga 4, Kazama 3, Watanabe 2, Koyama 1. With only two rounds in the series and the second run the next day, the same page already shows the finished table, Inoue on 37 ahead of Shinohara on 29 and Kazama on 28; how Sunday reshuffled it is the Rd.2 report’s story.

Where can you watch the replay?

Where the season went next

The Niigata Series was over within 24 hours: Rd.2 ran at the same circuit on Sunday 19 July, and the Rd.2 report covers it. If you want to stand at a D1 NEXT fence this year, the nearest round still to come as of 7 September is Central Rd.3 at Mobara Twin Circuit (Chiba) on Sunday 13 September 2026, run by the circuit on the forward layout with a BEST24 chase tournament: ¥19,800 to enter with tax and insurance included, plus ¥2,200 on the morning for the provisional-licence briefing if you hold no D1 licence; ¥1,000 to watch plus ¥1,000 per car to park; a 60-car cap; entries close on 10 September. It is also the one D1 NEXT venue you reach without a car, about 45 minutes by JR from Tokyo Station and a short bus or taxi, as our Mobara Twin Circuit guide lays out.

The entry process is where an overseas driver stalls. Mobara’s page runs it entirely in Japanese: a web reservation, then the entry sheet by fax or email, then the fee by bank transfer within three days, and once the web reservation is complete there is no cancellation; the original sheet is handed over at the desk on the morning. One typo to ignore: the announcement block calls 13 September Rd.4, while the schedule below it and D1’s series table both say Rd.3.

Every date above is on our drift event calendar, rechecked against the official pages each month; D1’s own series table says dates may change.