The PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team and riders Kaito Toba and Syarifuddin Azman are now in action at new track Balaton Park, in Hungary, the stage for the eighth round of the 2025 Supersport World Championship.

On track for the morning’s free practice, Toba and Azman spent time building confidence aboard their CBR600RR machines around this new circuit. This first session gave rookie Syarifuddin a first opportunity to ride the track, while Kaito saw Balaton for the first time last month during a brief test. Both riders did their best to make the most of their one and only practice session, with Toba in particular making good progress to set a best of 1’45.055. Teammate Azman put in a 1’47.323. With these lap times, the two riders placed twenty-second and thirtieth respectively.

The team then readied itself for the afternoon’s Superpole, eager to secure the best possible grid position for Saturday’s first race. With just forty minutes in which to get up to speed, Kaito and Syarifuddin soon saw their hard work begin to pay off. Despite an early interruption to the session following a crash for another rider, the Japanese rider continued undeterred and was able to set an impressive 1’43.750. Ducking under 1’44 meant that Toba scored his best Superpole result of the season so far, qualifying fifteenth for a spot on the fifth row of the grid. His fastest time put him just four tenths from the fourth-placed rider. On the other side of the garage, Malaysian rider Azman did well to take more than a second off his earlier time, setting a 1’45.258 in the final stages, which made for a qualifying position of twenty-sixth. The team will now analyse the day’s data and make some final preparations ahead of tomorrow’s first 18-lap race.

Kaito Toba #27

“This morning, we focused on improving the feeling in the braking points, and by the end of the session we had made a couple of adjustments that felt right. We continued in the same direction during the afternoon, and I was able to improve my lap time, as well as my pace. Things are very close in terms of the classification; it would have been nice to take a further step, but I couldn’t make the most out of the last few laps due to a few yellow flags. Let’s see what tomorrow brings!”

Syarifuddin Azman #63

“I’m quite happy overall but in Superpole I wasn't feeling 100% confident with the bike. I tried to manage the qualifying the best I could anyway, and the team knows what we need to do for warm-up tomorrow. This is my first time here, while some riders have already tested at the track, so I tried to do my best and we’ve improved over the course of the day for sure. We’ll try to find a little more in morning warm-up so we go into the race as prepared as we can be.”