The third round of the Kyojo Cup took place at the Fuji Speedway earlier this month. With a traffic intensive Sprint Race to kick off the weekend and a downpour of rain for Sunday’s Final Race, this latest installment of the all-female racing series was perhaps the most intense and challenging yet.
With two rounds left to go this season that bookend the month of October and ease us into the start of November, the direction of the Championship is becoming clearer and clearer with four drivers looking like the favourites for the title. But there was more than just the sharp end of the Championship at play this time out with a number of other fascinating storylines having their latest chapters written as the Kyojo Cup went racing once again.
Championship Hopefuls
Consistency is key for success in motorsport and the top four drivers in the Kyojo Cup Championship are proving this once again.
Following a difficult second round of her campaign, Riona Tomishita bounced back in style this time out with a dominant Sprint Race win which she then followed up with a second place finish - having qualified in Pole Position for both races. She now leads the standings by two points over Aimi Saito. Saito herself collected two third place finishes across the weekend to keep her Championship hopes alive. Her fifth place finish at the opening round back in May remains her lowest finishing position of the season so far.
Less than twenty points back from Tomishita in third place overall is Joanne Ciconte. While she didn’t grace the podium this time around, her two fourth place finishes after starting in eighth place for the former and in fourth place for the latter shows just how capable the young Australian is. This was especially true in such wet conditions as were present for Sunday’s race where the smallest mistake could have seen you tumbling down the order. While starting in fourth and finishing in fourth may not look like much on paper, when the full context is put into consideration, the achievement can be better appreciated. What’s more, Ciconte set the fastest lap of the race on Sunday too - no mean feat.
Eight points back from her sits Rio Shimono. The Japanese driver had the inverse results from Tomishita as she finished in second place on Saturday before taking the win on Sunday, having started alongside Tomishita on the front row of the grid. This third round of the Championship has been her strongest yet and has now propelled her into a position of having an outside shot at the Championship.
Standouts from Round III
Behind the main Championship contenders, a number of other drivers impressed in the third round of the 2026 Season. Sara Matsui was one of them as her seventh and fifth place finishes from the weekend gave her her strongest performance so far this year. Mastsui also had her best qualifying performance of the year, finishing in sixth place at the end of that session.
After narrowly missing out on points in Saturday’s Sprint Race by a single position, Paige Raddatz replicated her best finishing position of the year so far on Sunday when she crossed the finish line in sixth place. Having started down in eleventh place for the first race and then in ninth place for the second race, her progress up the order echoes that of Ciconte’s and as can be seen from her results so far this year, she’s definitely not a bad driver to emulate.
Kokoro Sato and Rami Sasaki were the only other two drivers to score points in both races in the third round of the Championship. Their consistency puts both drivers firmly inside the top ten overall - even if Sato’s sixth and seventh place finishes were her worst of the year so far and this round being the first where she didn’t visit the podium.
The Wrong Kind of Consistency
For those occupying the final six places at the bottom of the Championship Standings, the 2026 season continues to be a character building one. None of the drivers in these positions scored points across this last race weekend either, with each driver struggling in at least one of the two races. There was some hope for drivers like Marie Iwaoka who finished in P19 on Saturday before just missing out on points on Sunday with a P12 finish.
Elsewhere, while she didn’t score points, Sitarvee can be proud too of her best qualifying result of the year so far, starting Saturday’s race from tenth place on the grid.
Each driver will be hoping that their experiences from these three rounds will serve as a solid foundation for them to use as a springboard into the points for at least one of the remaining four races scheduled for this season.
The biggest shock however came from Miki Onaga. Like Ciconte, Onaga had been incredibly consistent this season, never finishing below fourth place and finishing on the podium last time out too. She qualified in fourth place but ultimately ended up outside of the points for both races. In the Sprint, she finished in P12, while in the Final Race, she was classified in P19 after DNFing.
An Opportunity to Learn
The wet conditions on Sunday may have been particularly vexing for all of the drivers but the opportunity to go racing in such conditions is never guaranteed. The higher echelons of single seater motorsport such as Formula 2 and Formula 3, as well as the pinnacle of motorsport itself, Formula 1, have been hesitant to race in wet conditions in recent years. This then makes it difficult for drivers to gain experience and master these mixed and wet conditions. But in the Kyojo Cup, that doesn’t seem to be the case and this will only serve to benefit these up and coming drivers, regardless of which categories of racing they end up competing in in the future.
The spray was monumental at times from what could be seen from the trackside cameras and indeed the onboard cameras for each driver too. While some drivers did struggle in these conditions and some DNFd as a result, the alternative of not racing at all does nothing to serve the betterment of these drivers - the overall aim of the Kyojo Cup. Rain is also known as the great equalizer in motorsport and has given drivers and fans some of the best races in history of the years and decades. From Tomishita’s bounce back to Ciconte’s consistency no matter the weather and the improvement from driver’s like Raddatz while catching out others such as Onaga, it helps to make the 2026 campaign that bit more fascinating and exciting to watch.
Final Thought
With a maximum of sixty-six points available for any one driver in the final two rounds of the season, it is still mathematically almost anyone’s game in the Kyojo Cup. But with a natural hierarchy having appeared to have established itself, that field will narrow again next time out ahead of the finale. Mistakes from here on out will prove costly and one good or bad weekend could turn the entire Championship on its head. With so many drivers still in play, the Kyojo Cup is set to have one of the most intriguing finales of the year.