The PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team fields riders Kaito Toba and Syarifuddin Azman in this weekend’s sixth round of the 2025 Supersport World Championship at the Misano World Circuit ‘Marco Simoncelli’ in Italy. 

During a brief warm-up in which the team made final preparations for the afternoon’s race, Kaito was able to find another half second with respect to his performance on Friday, setting a best of 1’38.787. A technical issue for Syarifuddin unfortunately prevented him from utilizing this final session prior to the afternoon’s Race 1 but the problem was soon solved by his technicians.

The first of the weekend’s 18-lap WorldSSP races ran at 12.35pm CET in high temperatures. Lining up on row ten and eleven of the grid respectively, Toba and Azman both got away well when the lights went out. Thirtieth through the opening stages, Azman held this position for the best part of the 18-lap race, the rookie struggling to control the bike and manage his pace. Making up one place during the final laps, the Malaysian crossed the line twenty-ninth. Toba’s race had barely begun when he unfortunately suffered a lap two crash through turn fourteen. Able to rejoin the race, the Japanese rider was determined to reach the finish line. He did well to maintain a consistently fast pace, but the time he lost in crashing prevented him from making up sufficient ground to rejoin the group, the rider concluding in thirtieth position.

Kaito Toba #27

“The team reviewed the bike thoroughly after yesterday’s sessions and found the source of the main issues we were having. In the warmup I could easily improve my lap time, though the setting was not perfect. In the race I started from the back but on the second lap the front of the bike locked up and I crashed. Since we need as much data as possible to improve the bike, I returned to the pits, the team fixed quickly the bike, and I went out again. We’ll now check the data and prepare for tomorrow.”

Syarifuddin Azman #63

“A tough race for me today. I wasn’t able to ride in warm-up as we had a small technical issue we needed to fix. So, I went directly into the race and found myself struggling to control the bike, which was moving a lot right from the early stages of the race. I tried to manage my pace, but it wasn’t sufficiently fast, particularly along the straight. I’m looking forward to Race 2 anyway, and we will keep working this evening and tomorrow morning to try and find a better setup that can offer me better feeling in tomorrow’s race.”