The PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team and riders Kaito Toba and Syarifuddin Azman are competing in round three of the 2025 Supersport World Championship, now in play at the TT Circuit Assen in The Netherlands.

Making the most of Friday’s dry weather, Toba and Azman set out to complete a solid free practice, aware that they only have this forty-minute session in which to identity a suitable setup for their CBR600RR bikes and be ready for qualifying. Gradually getting into a rhythm and moving up the timesheets as a result. His best, a 1’39.204 set mid-phase, was enough to put him twenty-fourth at the end of this session, the only WorldSSP practice. Rookie Azman had a little more difficulty, given that he has never ridden a 600-class bike at this tricky circuit until now. The young Malaysian set an initial reference of 1’41.543 but found himself struggling with arm pump, just as he had during the second race at Portimão. As a result, Azman was ruled unfit to take part in Superpole and will be reviewed on Saturday morning.

At 4pm local time (CET), it was straight into Superpole qualifying for Toba and the rest of the WorldSSP field. The Japanese rider was particularly keen to secure a good grid position following a complicated qualifying at Portimão. Immediately improving on his earlier time by seven tenths of a second, a determined Kaito did not stop there, continuing to up the pace throughout the course of the 40-minute session. In a very tightly packed field, Toba’s fastest time, a 1’37.820 set in the last five minutes, was enough to assure him of a spot on the sixth row of the grid, in eighteenth place, for the weekend’s races. The PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda riders will be back in action on Saturday, as they prepare for the first of the weekend’s 18-lap Supersport races. 

Kaito Toba #27

“In the morning, we focused mainly on bike setup and sorted a couple of minor points relating to the electronics. In qualifying, the times were incredibly tight - I think overall we’ve seen a big step up in quality compared to the past couple of years in WSSP. We tried to use the soft tyres and were able to set a 37.8 for the race grid. We will do our best tomorrow to continue in this direction.”

Syarifuddin Azman #63

“I was unlucky today in practice. I tried my best but had a lot of pain in my right hand, so I decided to stop with ten minutes of the session to go. I went to the Clinica Mobile for some physio on my hand and was then assessed by the doctors. They ruled me unfit for the Superpole sadly and will review the situation tomorrow morning to see if I am OK to ride or not.”