This weekend sees the PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team and riders Kaito Toba and Syarifuddin Azman in action at the Phillip Island circuit in Australia, the stage for round 1 of the Supersport World Championship.

On Saturday, the WorldSSP field only has a brief ten-minute session in which to warm up for the day’s first race. Tob and particularly rookie Azman did their best to exploit this additional track time as they prepared for the opening race of this 2025 season.

The season’s inaugural Supersport race, which ran over a distance of 18 laps and involved a mandatory mid-race tyre change, began as scheduled at 2.30pm local time (CET+10). In hot, dry conditions (air 35°C, track 54°C), Azman lined up in twenty-first place on the grid for his first ever World Supersport race, while Toba, having been unable to set a time during Friday’s Superpole following a crash, started twenty-second. Japanese rider Toba made a very rapid start, moving up to the points zone in the space of the first two laps. Keen to score a strong result given his positive performance in Friday’s practice, Kaito pushed hard through the opening stages, not wanting to let the frontrunners get away from him. Thirteenth by lap five, Toba elected to pit for the obligatory tyre change on lap nine and returned to the track in fifteenth place. Though unable to close the gap that had opened up in front of him, Kaito concluded this first race of the season inside the points zone, in fourteenth position. WorldSSP rookie Azman kept a cool head as the race began, lying nineteenth on lap two. Gaining another three positions in the early stages, the young Malaysian ran a steady first half of the race before coming in for his tyre change on lap nine. Once back on track, the category rookie effectively managed the final stages of the race, avoiding any mistakes and crossing the line seventeenth.

The PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team will return to the Australian track tomorrow for the second and final WorldSSP race of this season-opener, in which Toba and Azman will be aiming for more.

Kaito Toba #27

“I’m very disappointed with today’s race, but we’ve made a few mistakes over the course of the weekend, and then the crash in qualifying was my mistake. So not an easy first race for us, and the mandatory pit stop this weekend makes it more complicated. I’d hoped for more today but it’s still only the first race, so we will learn and work hard to improve, using the data collected to see what we can do already tomorrow. We already have some ideas as to what we need to do tomorrow, and the weather conditions will probably be different too, so we’ll see.”

Syarifuddin Azman #63

“First, I want to say a big thank you to the team for all their hard work. This was my first ever SSP race, and we also have to deal with the flag-to-flag situation this weekend, so it was quite difficult for me. Unfortunately, I lost some ground during the pit stop, but it is all good experience for me and the team and I can say I enjoyed my first race. It’s a shame I couldn’t finish inside the points, but I’m looking forward to trying again already tomorrow.”