Formula Drift Japan 2026 Rd.3 Ebisu Results: Sobagiri Wins, Xia Leads

Koudai Sobagiri (蕎麦切広大, #31) won Formula Drift Japan 2026 Round 3 at Ebisu Circuit West Course (Fukushima) on Sunday 14 June 2026, beating Jake Jones (#947) in the final; top qualifier Connor Xia (夏昌浩, #18) was classified third and RYUMA (#131) fourth. Xia’s semi-final finish stretched his championship lead from 3 points to 22: after three rounds the table read Xia 211, Sobagiri 189, RYUMA 175, our sum of the official per-round points. This report was written up on 7 September 2026 from the official result sheet, which is still headed 暫定リザルト, provisional, and every number in it was checked on the official pages on 7 Sep 2026.

Who won Round 3, and how?

Ebisu Circuit in Nihonmatsu is the venue every overseas drifter knows, and the West Course (Nishi) is its competition track, the one D1 Grand Prix also uses; our Ebisu Circuit guide covers all of its courses and the trip from Tokyo. G-SHOCK presents 2026 Formula Drift Japan Round 3 ran there on 13–14 June on the reprofiled West Course layout that the series’ venue notice dates to 2024. A one-day advance ticket was ¥3,800, ¥4,500 at the gate, parking ¥1,000, with spectator parking on the South course and 16 vendor booths in the paddock. Saturday 13 June was tansō (単走), solo judged runs, two per driver, ranked on the better score. Xia topped it with an 89 backed by a 74; Kazumi Takahashi (高橋和己, #36) and RYUMA both scored 87, Takahashi’s 84 backup putting him second, and Ken Gushi (#21) and Sobagiri followed on 86. The Top 32 cut fell at 71, with three drivers on that score, Kei Murakami (村上佳, #610), Takuto Iguchi (井口卓人, #88) and Shuichi Mano (真野修一, #666), and Jin Horino (堀野仁, #17) first out on 68. Two names from the top of the table were in trouble already: Naoki Nakamura (中村直樹, #999), the Fuji winner who had arrived third in the championship, recorded no score in either run and left with 1 point, and fourth-placed Masanori Kohashi (小橋正典, #4) qualified 29th on 72. Koichi Yamashita (山下広一, #37) is listed as リタイヤ, retired, on the official sheet, with no reason given.

Sunday 14 June was tsuisō (追走), the tandem chase battles that decide the round, two runs per pairing with lead and chase swapped. Sobagiri’s route from fifth ran through Mike Nakamura (中村マイキ, #66), Daigo Saito (斎藤太吾, #87) and Gushi, then the top qualifier Xia in the semi-final. Jones came through the other half from seventh, past Luca Merli (#101), Soshiro Nakamura (中村総士郎, #7), second-qualifier Takahashi in the Top 8 and third-qualifier RYUMA in the semi-final. The official sheet lists outcomes, not the judges’ scores, so we will not invent them: Sobagiri won the final, and 4 qualifying points plus 100 for the win gave him 104, his first victory of 2026 after a Top 8 exit at Fuji and a Top 16 exit at Suzuka Twin. Jones’s 84 for second was his best score of the season by a distance, after 18 and 19 points in the first two rounds. Xia and RYUMA both lost their semi-finals for 64 battle points; the sheet classifies Xia third on 71 and RYUMA fourth on 69, the qualifying points separating them.

The bracket: which battles are worth rewatching?

The Top 32 had already turned the seeding over. Chin Hsi-Chun (秦錫鈞, #260), 27th in qualifying, beat sixth-qualifier Sena (#829) and then Messmer to reach the Top 8; Chiam Benjamin (#83), 24th, beat Pop (#89) and then eighth-qualifier Wataru Masuyama (益山航, #530), who had arrived second in the championship, 3 points behind Xia. Itsuki Fukada (深田一希, #38), 20th, beat Harry Yoza (与座ハリー, #43); Yukio Fausto (#555), 19th, beat Sheng Nian (#54); and Gushi ended Kohashi’s weekend in the Top 32, 2 plus 16 for 18 points. Benjamin’s and Chin’s Top 8 finishes, 50 points each, were the best results either had posted in 2026.

Who led the championship after Round 3?

By 7 September 2026 the official standings page on formulad.jp had moved on to include Round 4, so the totals below are our sum of the official Round 1–3 columns on that page, not a transcription of its Total column. The before-Ebisu column is the same arithmetic over Rounds 1 and 2.

Three rounds, three different winners: Naoki Nakamura at Fuji, Xia at Suzuka Twin, Sobagiri at Ebisu West. Sobagiri had arrived tenth in the table and left second; Takahashi, second in qualifying, was ninth on 123 after his Top 8 exit. The scale, read off the result sheet, is 100 battle points for the win, then 80, 64, 48, 32 and 16 for each earlier exit and 1 for missing the cut, plus 7 for qualifying P1 down to 2 for 32nd, so each round is worth up to 107. How that differs from D1’s scoring is in our D1GP vs Formula Drift Japan comparison; the FDJ, FDJ2 and FDJ3 ladder is explained in the Formula Drift Japan guide.

Where can you watch the replay?

Where the season went next

Round 4 at Sportsland SUGO (Miyagi) followed on 11–12 July 2026, and it belonged to Takahashi: from 13th in qualifying he beat Sobagiri in the Top 16 and Kohashi in the final, while Xia went out in the Top 32, which squeezed the official standings to Xia 231, RYUMA 230, Takahashi 226, Sobagiri 225. The full report is our Rd.4 SUGO results. Takahashi then won Round 5 at Gransnow Okuibuki (Shiga) on 6 September as well, beating Soshiro Nakamura in the final, and on our arithmetic took over the championship lead; that story is in the Rd.5 Okuibuki results. The title is decided at Okayama International Circuit (Okayama) on 2–4 October 2026, advance day ticket ¥3,800.

If Ebisu itself is the draw, the next competition weekend on the same West Course is D1 Grand Prix Rd.5 & 6, EBISU DRIFT, on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September 2026; the Friday is a closed practice day with no spectator admission. Every reserved-seat category was already marked 完売, sold out, when we checked the official ticket page on 4 September, which leaves same-day tickets at the gate, ¥8,800–¥14,300 per day with a separate ticket for each day, and parking at ¥1,000 sold on the day only. Three things stall overseas visitors from there: the reserved seats are gone, the ticket site is Japanese-only, and the last leg from JR Nihonmatsu Station, or from Koriyama on the Shinkansen, is a four-a-day Fukushima Kotsu bus or a taxi phoned for in Japanese; our Ebisu access article has the timetable, and the D1 Grand Prix spectator guide the seat types.

Every remaining 2026 date, FDJ and D1 alike, sits on the event calendar, rechecked against the official pages each month.