D1 NEXT West 2026 Rd.1 Bihoku Results: Yoshida Wins the Opener

Michio Yoshida (吉田道夫, #8) won D1 NEXT West Series 2026 Round 1 at Bihoku Highland Circuit (Okayama) on Sunday 9 August 2026, beating Toshihiro Tanaka (田中敏博, #23) in the final after topping qualifying with 97.95 points. Shigenobu Koga (古賀誠進, #45) was classified third and Hiroyuki Fukuyama (福山博行, #32) fourth from a field of 54. The official 2026 D1 NEXT ranking already carries the round: Yoshida leads the two-round West Series on 25 points, 4 clear of Tanaka, with the finale at Hadashi Tengoku Circuit (Yamaguchi) on Sunday 6 December. This report was written up on 7 September 2026 from D1’s official post of 10 August, and every figure in it was checked on the official pages on 7 Sep 2026.

Who won Round 1, and how?

D1 NEXT is the open-entry regional tier of the D1 ladder (our D1 NEXT explainer covers the tiers). The West Series is the smallest of the six 2026 series, two rounds run by D-STAGE, and it opened on the 1,100 m B course at Bihoku, the circuit in our Bihoku Highland guide.

The morning was tansō (単走), solo judged runs with the better score counting. Yoshida’s S13 set 97.95 with a 97.55 backup, ahead of Yoshitomo Takane (髙根芳朋, #36, JZX100) on 97.8 and Tanaka on 97.5. The cut fell after 24th place, at 94.4; the first man out was 0.15 short. The top eight were seeded straight into the Top 16 and ninth to 24th ran a first round for the other eight places, a wider net than the Best 16 the rulebook describes. Twenty of the 24 were S-chassis Nissans; the other four were Takane’s JZX100, a C35 Laurel, a Z33 and the GC8 Impreza of Yuichiro Toyoda (豊田雄一郎, #4).

The afternoon was tsuisō (追走), the tandem chase battles that decide the round. Yoshida beat Hiromasa Araki (荒木宏昌, #42), Toyoda, Koga and Tanaka in turn; Tanaka came through Toshiki Nuibe (縫部寿樹, #2), Kazuya Nagahiro (永広和也, #25) and Fukuyama. The upsets: Fukuyama, 15th in qualifying, put out second qualifier Takane in the Top 16 and reached the semi-finals; Koga, 12th, won three battles for third. The official sheet gives outcomes only, no judges’ scores, so we will not invent them.

The bracket: which battles decided it?

One box on the official bracket graphic, at the Top-16 stage of Mifune’s quarter, repeats the name of Atsushige Kawanaka (川中篤重, #37); the official classification and the series ranking both place Hiroaki Mifune (三船宏明, #53) fifth, a Top-8 exit, and Kawanaka 16th, so we read that battle as a Mifune win and the box as a copy error.

Who leads the D1 NEXT West Series after Round 1?

D1’s 2026 NEXT ranking page already includes Bihoku, so this table is the official West Series standing, not our arithmetic.

Ninth to 16th score too: Takane 8, Kozai 7, Kawakami 6, Notsu 5, Yamamoto 4, Araki 3, Nuibe 2, Kawanaka 1. The rulebook’s scale is 25 for a win, then 21, 18, 16 and 13 down to 1 for 16th, so Tanaka needs to outscore Yoshida by 5 at Hadashi Tengoku to take the series on points. The rulebook’s points chapter also issues a D1-A licence at 16 series points, other divisions combinable — Yoshida, Tanaka, Koga and Fukuyama are already there after one round, which is the real prize in this tier.

What does it take to enter this class from overseas?

D1 NEXT is the D1 tier you can enter yourself, and the Bihoku sheet shows the door is open: 54 cars against a cap of 60, two of them entered in Latin script, Hayden Finnie (#21, RPS13, 32nd on 92.5) and Pang Jeffrey (#46, RPS13). The West rulebook, checked on 7 September 2026, asks for an ordinary driving licence and 18 or over, or a guardian if under 18; a D1-A, a D1-B or a provisional licence issued after the morning briefing for ¥2,200, valid that day; ¥20,000 in cash at the desk, plus ¥1,000 at the Bihoku gate per companion; and a car with three-point or better belts, both bumpers, working lights, 105 dB or less and tyres no wider than 265, on a transporter if it has no plates, because temporary plates are refused. Entry opens two months before the round and closes ten days before it: download the sheet from D1’s site, photograph it and send it to the organiser’s LINE account, in Japanese. D1 Grand Prix licence holders cannot enter. Whether a foreign driving licence is accepted is not stated, so treat that as TBC.

Where the season went next

One round is left: Rd.2 at Hadashi Tengoku Circuit (Yamaguchi) on Sunday 6 December 2026, organised by D-STAGE, the finale for Yoshida’s 4-point lead. The venue is the hard part. As our Chugoku track guide found, Hadashi Tengoku in Shunan has had no working website since 2020, takes enquiries only by telephone in Japanese, and its nearest station, Takamizu, is about 36 minutes on foot; its own events charge ¥500 at the gate, but nothing is published for the D1 round, so December’s gate price is TBC. By the rulebook’s formula, entries open around 6 October and close around 26 November.

If it is Bihoku itself you want rather than the series, its autumn is busier than its August: Final Bout SSJ West on 22 November and the JDC Rd.3 final on 29 November are both on our drift event calendar, rechecked against the official pages each month.