FDJ3 2026 Rd.1 Fuji Results: Peres Wins Qualifying and the Final

Ricky Peres (リッキー ぺレス, #70) won FDJ3 2026 Round 1 at Fuji Speedway Drift Park (Shizuoka) on Wednesday 29 April 2026, beating Ryu Funabashi (船橋竜, #64) in the final after also topping the morning’s qualifying on 86 points. Yuto Saito (齋藤優斗, #67) was classified third on 63 points and Souta Notsu (野津颯太, #80) fourth on 62. Winning both halves of a one-day round is worth the maximum 106 points, so Peres opened the season leading the championship by 24. This report was written up on 7 September 2026 from the official result sheet and report, 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 1, and how?

FDJ3 is the entry tier of Formula Drift Japan, in its fourth season since 2023 and run on a single Yokohama control tyre; this round was titled YOKOHAMA Presents 2026 FDJ3 Round.1, and 59 drivers signed on for the year, from four teenagers to a 68-year-old newcomer. The venue is not the Grand Prix circuit. Fuji Speedway Drift Park is a separate pad inside the same complex, renamed for 2026 from the Multi-Purpose Driving Course, and because its layout can be reconfigured the series used a course never run before: four outer zones on the judged corner with a touch-and-go between the third and the fourth. Our Fuji Speedway Drift Park guide covers what it takes to get your own car onto that tarmac.

The morning was tansō (単走), solo judged runs, two per driver, ranked on the better score. Fifty cars turned up, three retired before qualifying and 47 ran: 41 set a score and six recorded nothing at all, because running wide meant an instant zero. Peres took the top spot with the last run of the session, an 86 backed by a 76. SEIKA (#19) was second on 85, Issa Minakawa (皆川一茶, #135) third on 84, Atsushi Tarumi (樽見淳, #222) fourth on 83 and Saito fifth on 82. The cut fell at 73: Yoshimi Mori (森修, #72) took the last place on that score and Ryosuke Kinoshita (#59) missed out on the same number.

The afternoon was tsuisō (追走), tandem chase battles run twice with lead and chase swapped, through rounds the series calls the Great 8 and the Final 4. Peres’s JZX100 beat Mori, then Douglas Ozaki (尾崎ドグラス, #107), then Saito, then Funabashi, whose final the official report describes as small on every zone while chasing and then two zones missed while leading. In the comment published with the report Peres said machine trouble had made it a hard day and thanked his team; it was his second FDJ3 win, after taking Round 4 of last season on the way to sixth in the standings.

The bracket: which battles are worth rewatching?

Six of the fifteen battles went to the lower qualifier, four of them in the Top 16. Second, third and fourth in qualifying were all gone before the semi-finals: Minakawa lost to fourteenth qualifier Otgonbaatar Zoliargal (オトゴンバートル ゾルジャラガル, #98), Tarumi to thirteenth qualifier Muneo Miyachi (宮地むねお, #670), then SEIKA to Notsu in the Top 8. Two Top 16 battles needed a One More Time rerun, Miyachi over Tarumi and Saito over Ryo Kato (加藤諒, #345).

The story of the afternoon was the 16-year-old. Notsu was on debut, qualified tenth on 77 and beat seventh qualifier Hiromu Kagayama (加々山大夢, #35) and then SEIKA before Funabashi stopped him. He and Saito both banked 60 battle points; Saito’s higher qualifying position was worth one more, so the sheet lists him third on 63 to Notsu’s 62.

Who led the FDJ3 championship after Round 1?

This was the opening round, so the championship table is the round’s own points, transcribed from the official Round 1 column on the formulad.jp standings page. The scale is 100 battle points for the win, 80 for the runner-up, 60 for a losing semi-finalist, 40 for a Top 8 exit and 20 for a Top 16 exit, plus 6 for qualifying P1 sliding to 2 for sixteenth. Miss the cut and you get one point, which is what 31 drivers took home. Twelve of the 59 entrants are marked リタイヤ, retired, with nothing at all, among them PANDA KUN (#3) and George (ジョージ, #25), who would both reach the Top 16 at the next round. Where FDJ3 sits under FDJ2 and the top class is in our Formula Drift Japan guide.

Where the season went next

Peres’s lead lasted exactly one round. At Suzuka Twin Circuit on 31 May he qualified 29th, missed the cut and scored a single point, while Notsu won from 16th and took the championship, as our Rd.2 report sets out. At Ebisu Circuit West Course on 5 July it was Minato Oike (#371) who won from ninth, with Notsu holding the lead despite a Top 16 exit, in our Rd.3 report.

The round to circle is Rd.5, back on this same pad on Sunday 18 October 2026, a one-day round while the senior FDJ and FDJ2 series run two-day weekends. As of 7 September 2026 that round’s ticket line still reads Soon, so budget for what Rd.1 charged: ¥1,200 adult admission at the Fuji Speedway gate plus ¥2,000 in cash at the Drift Park entrance, parking free, nothing sold in advance. The Japanese entry page still calls the venue by its old name, the Multi-Purpose Driving Course. Rd.4 at Okuibuki Motorpark (Shiga) on 20 September asks ¥3,000 admission plus ¥1,500 per car or ¥1,000 per motorcycle at the gate; the finale, Rd.6 at Tsukuruma Circuit Nasu (Tochigi) on 1 November, had no published spectator price on 7 September 2026.

Driving in it is not on the table: FDJ3 sells a season entry, ¥264,000 including tax for all six rounds, rather than a per-round price, and 2026 applications closed in February. A normal running day on the pad is its own wall. Our venue guide found that the compulsory licence lecture is delivered in Japanese only, with Fuji asking you to bring your own interpreter, that day tickets go on web sale two weeks before the date and no earlier, and that running days can still be cancelled or changed inside that fortnight; the alternative, organiser days, are entered by Japanese email or web form to a small club.

Every FDJ3, FDJ2 and Formula Drift Japan date left in 2026 sits on the event calendar, rechecked against formulad.jp each month.