The day began with a short warm-up in which the Supersport field made final preparations for the weekend’s first race. Toba and Pawi used the brief phase effectively, carrying out checks with their technical teams and placing twenty-second and twenty-fourth respectively at the session’s end. 

Running over a distance of 17 laps, Race 1 got underway as scheduled at 3.15pm CET. Toba was lying twentieth through the opening stages but soon got into a consistent rhythm. Progressing to sixteenth over the course of the first five laps, the Japanese rider was part of a tight-knit group of four riders, along with team-mate Pawi, who pushed in the initial stages to climb from twentieth to eighteenth. Lapping with very similar pace to each other, the two PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda riders were up into sixteenth and seventeenth place by the mid-race point, both determined to achieve points today. Separated from each other by mere thousandths of a second, the two riders each gained a position before exchanging places on lap 13. Khairul and Kaito battled it out over the last few laps, with the Japanese rider eventually getting the better of his Malaysian team-mate after passing him on the very last lap. Both riders nevertheless completed the race inside the points zone, with Toba finishing P14 and Pawi P15. A very positive result, and the first time this season that both PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda riders have achieved points in the same race. 

Kaito Toba P14

“In today’s warm up we tried a different solution for the bike set up, but we didn’t find any benefit and so ultimately went back to yesterday’s set-up. At the start of the race, I did my best to defend my position. I struggled mostly through the tight corners and had to manage the spinning as well as possible. The track temperature was also higher than in previous sessions and that didn’t work in our favour. Anyway, a points finish and now we have today’s data to review to prepare ahead of tomorrow when we’ll give it one last try.” 

Khairul Idham Pawi P15

“In today’s race I felt quite good on the bike and was able to manage the race pace perhaps better than others in my group. Early on I lost a little ground to Kaito but once I caught him and the group, I was able to stick with them. I think I could have done more had I not lost that time at the beginning. But in general, I had really good feeling. Yes, we’re still quite far from the front, but we were clearly more competitive today and closer to the front. I’ll be doing my best to score more points in Race 2.”