The eighth Supersport World Championship round has concluded for the PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team, with Kaito Toba scoring a valuable points finish in Race 2 at the brand-new Balaton Park circuit in Hungary. Syarifuddin Azman ran a good race to place twenty-first.

After a brief morning warm-up, the team prepared for the second and final race of the weekend, which ran in dry conditions. Sixteenth off the line, Toba found himself part of a large group of tightly packed riders. Slipping initially to nineteenth, the Japanese quickly bounced back was up into the points zone already by lap two. Fourteenth after nine of 18 laps, Toba performed consistently well over the second half to secure a finish inside the points, in fourteenth place. 

Twenty-fifth on the grid, Azman made up seven places through the first turn, benefitting in the general chaos to place a temporary eighteenth. The Malaysian rookie was lying twenty-first at the mid-race point, lapping with similar pace to his closest rivals. Able to maintain this rhythm to the line, Syarifuddin confirmed twenty-first position in this final race making up the Hungarian round.

As this eighth round draws to a conclusion, Toba places twenty-third in the championship standings with 12 points, while Azman is yet to score. WorldSSP will now take a five-week break before the action resumes at the Magny-Cours Circuit in France over the weekend of 5-7 September.

Kaito Toba #27

“This morning’s warmup was on wet tarmac and so we couldn’t really use the session to dig deeper into options for the bike’s set up. It was good to gather some data in those conditions though. When the race started, I defended my position and, although there were a couple of tricky accidents out there, I was lucky to stay out of trouble. I battled in the points zone and had some fun overtaking, eventually scoring a couple of points. Our target is to be in the top 10, so we’ll keep working hard to close the gap bit by bit.”

Syarifuddin Azman #63

“I enjoyed Race 2 as I was able to fight quite hard with my closest rivals. I was happy with the bike as I felt more comfortable and could battle with those ahead. The only thing is that I was losing to the others along the straight, but overall, I’m quite pleased. I tried to finish strong and crossed the line twenty-first, repeating my race 1 result. Now I plan to work hard over the summer break so that I’m prepared for the next round in France.”