D1 Grand Prix 2026 Tsukuba Results: Yokoi Wins Rd.3 and Rd.4

Masashi Yokoi (横井昌志, #70) won both rounds of the D1 Grand Prix 2026 weekend at Tsukuba Circuit (Ibaraki), TSUKUBA DRIFT, on 27–28 June 2026: Round 3 on the Saturday over Naoki Nakamura (中村直樹, #99) in a final settled on the lead runs, and Round 4 on the Sunday without turning a wheel in the final, because the S15 of Kojiro Mekuwa (目桑宏次郎, #79) retired with a boost-pressure fault before it started. The official ranking after Round 4 has Yokoi on 79 points, Nakamura on 74 and Koudai Sobagiri (蕎麦切広大, #31) on 73, a lead that changed hands on each of the two days. This is a backfilled report, written up on 7 September 2026 from D1’s official reports; every score and point below was checked on the official pages on 7 Sep 2026.

Who won Round 3, and how?

A D1 Grand Prix weekend is two championship rounds, one a day, each with its own solo-run qualifying and its own tandem tournament; the D1 Grand Prix spectator guide explains the format and our Aichi report covers the opening two rounds. Tsukuba’s judged section starts partway round the final corner, with the drift initiated on the main straight, then runs through turn 1 and the S-curves to the exit of the first hairpin; this year the first crash pad on the straight was moved further down to make drivers hold more angle there. The Friday practice day was properly wet and two typhoons were forecast for the Saturday, so D1 declared its wet rule for the solo runs, tansō (単走): the field ran in four groups and the top four of each group went through, rather than the top sixteen scores overall. The heavy rain never came, and the track was close to dry by the end.

Sobagiri’s first run of 98.20 was the score of the day, ahead of Nakamura on 97.78 and Yumeto Hatanaka (畑中夢斗, #75) on 97.70; Yokoi was eighth on 97.14. Rookie Daiki Nishiyama (西山大貴, #67), first car out, went through cleanly. Daigo Saito (齋藤太吾, #87) could not start with a gearbox problem, and Hokuto Matsuyama (松山北斗, #77) went out with an engine fault that had not shown itself in the wet.

The tandem battles, tsuisō (追走), ran with spells of light rain, and four of the top eight qualifiers lost in the Best 16: Sobagiri closed up too tight on his chase run against Keiichi Nomura (野村圭市, #3) and spun, and Hatanaka’s drift straightened on the straight while chasing Teruyoshi Iwai (岩井照宜, #51). POP (Lattapon Keawchin, #89), the driver from Thailand in the TEAM VERTEX D2D SHIBATIRE S15, beat Ryu Nakamura (中村龍, #76) and then Mekuwa, despite touching Mekuwa on the straight, to reach the semi-finals, where the judges ruled he had grip-driven through the S-curve judged section against Yokoi and deducted heavily. Nakamura beat Hideyuki Fujino (藤野秀之, #66) in the other semi-final with a chase run the official report describes as close to full marks.

The final was the pair the official report calls long-time rivals. Run one: Yokoi led and scored 96.5, Nakamura chased for 12.7 proximity points and 106.7 in total. Run two: Nakamura led for 94.3, Yokoi chased for 13.3 proximity points and, again, 106.7. Identical chase totals, so the lead runs decided it, 96.5 to 94.3; how those numbers are built is in how tsuiso battles are judged. Nakamura’s 24 points for the day still put him top of the championship overnight.

D1 publishes its results in Japanese; the spellings above are the usual English ones, with the kanji beside each driver at first mention. Pairings the official report does not describe follow from D1’s seeded draw, 1 v 16, 8 v 9 and so on, and the official final classification.

Who won Round 4, and why was there no final battle?

Sunday was dry at dawn, wet by the solo runs and drying again for the tandems, so the wet rule applied a second time, and the day began with two engine failures in the morning check run: Mitsuru Murakami (村上満, #23) and Tsuyoshi Tezuka (手塚強, #90) were both out before a scored lap. The official account posted this as the field warmed up; the card carries the UTC date, and in Japan it was 6:34 on the Sunday morning.

Yokoi’s second run, 95.41, won the solo runs from Fujino on 93.80 and Mekuwa on 93.79, with Sobagiri fourth on 93.72; Nakamura went through tenth on 91.83. Hatanaka spun into turn 1 and missed the cut, and six of Saturday’s sixteen tandem drivers were replaced. Kenshiro Wada (和田賢志郎, #81), in his first tandem bracket of the season, knocked out Fujino in the Best 16 and then retired in the Best 8 when his engine would not rev; Takahiro Ueno (上野高広, #78) reached his first Best 8 in a year when the Supra of Yoshichika Tamagawa (玉川艶哉, #12) broke; and POP ran into the back of Sobagiri’s GR86 on the straight, broke a driveshaft and retired.

Both semi-finals turned on contact. Sobagiri led Yokoi by 12.1 points after run one, then went off at the hairpin on his own lead run and the two cars touched; the judges put most of the fault on Sobagiri and Yokoi went through. Mekuwa followed Nakamura almost bumper to bumper for 14.0 proximity points and a 10.8-point lead, and when Nakamura pushed him at turn 1 on run two the fault was Nakamura’s, so Mekuwa reached his first final since moving to TEAM D-MAX RACING. It never ran: his S15, the car Yokoi himself drove until last year, developed a boost-pressure fault before the run, the team gave up on the repair, and Yokoi was declared the winner, a second victory in a row and the championship lead. In the official interview he said the car and the suspension package he has used since this season had him in the best form of his career.

Who leads the championship after Round 4?

The official 2026 ranking on d1gp.co.jp carried Rounds 1 to 4 when we checked on 7 September, so this table is a straight transcription. The scale is readable off it: 25 for a round win, 21 for second, 18 for third, 16 for fourth, down to 1 for sixteenth, plus 4, 3, 2 and 1 for the top four in the solo runs, which is how Yokoi’s Sunday came to 29.

Sobagiri arrived at Tsukuba leading on 42 and left third; Nakamura led for one night. D1 also keeps a separate solo-run ranking, which Nakamura heads on 79 from Mekuwa on 71, and a team ranking that Yokoi’s Mind Control Racing SHIBATIRE leads on 78. Ryo Ishii (石井亮, #50), seventh, scored nothing on either day. How D1’s DOSS-plus-judges scoring differs from Formula Drift Japan’s is in our D1GP vs Formula Drift Japan comparison.

Where can you watch the replay?

Saturday’s Round 3 stream, with the Yokoi–Nakamura final, is a separate upload on the same channel, and each day also has a scoreboard-only stream; the commentary is in Japanese.

Where the season went next

The weekend drew 4,841 spectators over its three days by the official count, and every reserved seat had gone in advance: main stand ¥7,700, hairpin stand ¥13,200, tyre-maker cheer seats ¥8,800, terrace ¥33,000 and premium ¥44,000, all marked 完売, sold out, with a ¥4,950 pit-top standing ticket added from 23 June. D1’s own ¥4,400 return bus from Moriya Station, forty seats a day with a lap of the circuit on arrival, sold out for both days too. That is the pattern to plan around for the rest of the year.

The next D1 Grand Prix weekend is Rd.5 & 6, EBISU DRIFT, at Ebisu Circuit (Fukushima) on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September 2026, on the Nishi course; the Friday is closed practice with no spectator admission. Advance seats ran from ¥6,600 for a B seat to ¥11,000 for an SS seat, but every reserved category was marked sold out when we checked on 4 September, two days after general sales opened. What is left is the same-day window: ¥8,800–¥14,300 per day, a separate ticket for each day, and ¥1,000 parking paid on the day. Our Ebisu Circuit guide covers the venue and the access article the four-a-day bus from Nihonmatsu Station. After Ebisu the series goes to Autopolis (Oita) for Rd.7 & 8 on 24–25 October and to a finale on 14–15 November whose venue still read T.B.A. on the official page on 4 September; all three sit on the event calendar.