FDJ3 2026 Rd.5 Fuji Results: Peres Wins Again and Takes the Lead

Ricky Peres (リッキー ぺレス, #70) won FDJ3 2026 Round 5 at Fuji Speedway Drift Park in Oyama, Shizuoka, on Sunday 18 October 2026, beating Souta Notsu (野津颯太, #80) in the final; Atsushi Tarumi (樽見淳, #222) was classified third and Issa Minakawa (皆川一茶, #135) fourth. Peres also topped qualifying, so he left with the maximum 106 points. The man he was chasing, Ryu Funabashi (船橋竜, #64), qualified 25th and missed the cut. Adding the provisional Round 5 points to the official table through Round 4 puts Peres on 317, 47 ahead of Notsu, with one round left. Every figure below was read off the official formulad.jp pages on 18 Oct 2026, and the result sheet is headed 暫定リザルト, provisional.

Who won Round 5 at Fuji, and how?

FDJ3 is the entry tier of Formula Drift Japan and runs one-day Sunday rounds. Round 5, badged YOKOHAMA Presents, ran on the Drift Park pad inside the Fuji Speedway complex; our Fuji Speedway Drift Park guide covers the venue. Spectators paid two separate charges: ¥1,200 Fuji Speedway admission at the gate, then a ¥2,000 FDJ3 viewing fee in cash at the Drift Park entrance. Parking was free.

The morning was tansō (単走), solo judged runs, two per driver, ranked on the better one. Forty-five names are on the result sheet and 42 carry a qualifying position. Peres put up an 80, with a 71 backup. Buyu Nakazawa (中澤ブユ, #157) was second on 79 from a single scored run, then PANDA KUN (#3) and Yuto Saito (齋藤優斗, #67) tied on 77, separated by their second runs. The cut was brutal: seven drivers posted a best of 69, and Masahito Takeuchi (竹内理人, #488) took 16th on a 68 backup. Funabashi’s best was 68 and his second run scored zero, which left him 25th with 1 point.

The afternoon was tsuisō (追走), the tandem chase battles, two runs per pairing with lead and chase swapped. Peres went through Takeuchi, then Muneo Miyachi (宮地むねお, #670), then Tarumi in the semi-final. Notsu came from seventh on the grid, past Takao Nozawa (野沢たかお, #930), second qualifier Nakazawa and then Minakawa. The official sheet lists outcomes, not judges’ scores, so we will not invent them: Peres won the final. It is his third win of 2026, after Round 1 at Fuji and Round 4 at Okuibuki, and his second in a row. Both semi-final losers got 60 battle points and are separated on qualifying, so Tarumi’s 3 put him third on 63 and Minakawa fourth on 62.

The bracket: which battles are worth rewatching?

Two of these are title battles. The second semi-final put Notsu, second in the championship on our sum, against Minakawa, third; Notsu’s win there is worth 20 points in the table. The final then put the top two head to head. Minakawa’s run to the semi-final came from 11th on the grid, the lowest seed to get that far, past sixth qualifier Shinohara and third qualifier PANDA KUN.

Who leads the FDJ3 championship after Round 5?

The official standings page on formulad.jp still showed only Rounds 1 to 4 when we read it on 18 October 2026, hours after the podium. The table below starts from that official total and adds the points on the official provisional Round 5 sheet. The right-hand column is our arithmetic, not the organiser’s word.

Read off the result sheet, the scale is 100 battle points for the win, 80 for the runner-up, 60 for each semi-final loser, 40 for a Top 8 exit and 20 for a Top 16 exit. Qualifying adds 6 for P1 down to 1 for missing the cut, so Round 6 is worth up to 106. Peres’s 47-point margin over Notsu is less than that, and Minakawa is 62 back, so on our numbers the title is not settled. Funabashi and Oike, first and fifth a month ago, both missed the cut here and are now 104 and 130 behind. How FDJ3 sits under FDJ2 and the top class is in our Formula Drift Japan guide. The organiser’s own notices framed this round as a fight for the title and for promotion rights to FDJ2, which is why the Top 8 places count too.

Where can you watch the replay?

▶ 2026 FDJ3 Round 5 TOP16 to FINAL FORMULA DRIFT JAPAN · official channel click to load from youtube

The morning’s qualifying went up as a separate video on the same channel a few hours earlier. For the start of Peres’s season on the same pad, see our Round 1 report from Fuji, and for his Okuibuki win the Round 4 report.

Next round: the Nasu final, and how to get there

Round 6, the season final, is at Tsukuruma Circuit Nasu in Nasushiobara, Tochigi, on Sunday 1 November 2026. As of 18 October the official event page listed ticket, programme, entry list and timetable as Soon. That is normal at this distance: Fuji’s admission notice landed 12 days before the round and the timetable 9 days before. Driving in it is not an option for a visitor, because FDJ3 sells a season entry rather than single rounds.

Nasu-shiobara is a stop on the Tohoku Shinkansen, so the train part is easy. The circuit is not. No scheduled bus reaches Takabayashi, where the circuit sits. The only public option is Yu-Taku, the city’s reservation-only demand taxi, booked by phone in Japanese, with the first useful run at 07:50. Our Tsukuruma Circuit Nasu guide has the details. For a title decider that starts in the morning, that phone call decides whether you see qualifying.

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