Kyojo Cup: Ai Miura survives late-race clash to take her first win of the season
- MARCO ALBERTINI
- 4 minutes ago
- 3 min read
In the second KYOJO Sprint of the season, Team ReFa with AiWin owner-driver Ai Miura was the star of the show, leading from start to finish and surviving a late-race clash with Riona Tomishita to take her first Kyojo Cup win since her championship-winning season in 2023.
After taking a best result of fifth last time out in May, 2023 series champion Ai Miura broke through in the second KYOJO Sprint of the season, taking the lead at the start and holding off challenges from Riona Tomishita and Aimi Saito to take her first win in three years.
At the start of the weekend, championship leader Tomishita was the driver to match, as her impressive pace from May carried over to this weekend, setting the overall fastest lap across both days of on-track action.
When it came time for qualifying on a wet Sunday morning, the Chiba-born driver led most of the session and began trading pole with Saito, whose 1:52.477 set with nine minutes to go was no match for the rest of the field, giving the Kanagawa driver her first pole of the season. Joining her on the front row for the Sprint was KCMG's Miki Onaga, while Tomishita fell to fourth by the end of the session, just behind Miura. Cerumo/INGING's other car of Kokoro Sato qualified just behind Tomishita in fifth, closely followed by the TOM'S of Hana Burton and the CSA Racing car of Paige Raddatz, who took her best qualifying result of seventh.
However, Saito lost the lead after a sluggish start to the Sprint, while Miura rocketed from third to first, as Tomishita cleared Onaga's KCMG just after the first corner. Behind them, ninth-place starter Shimono ended the opening lap in fifth after overtaking Sato at Dunlop, while Raddatz overtook Burton in the final sector to re-take seventh.
At the front, Tomishita held off Onaga's attacks, while Saito began attacking Miura for the lead on lap three, but was kept at bay at Turn 1. On the following lap, Saito tried again to take the lead and was almost fully ahead of Miura before the braking zone of the same corner, but wasn't able to complete the pass, as Miura immediately launched an attack and took back the lead on corner exit.
A nearly identical situation happened again on lap five, but with the top two losing time battling, Tomishita closed in and overtook Saito for second as they headed down to Turn 3. However, the TOM'S driver still kept persisting, running side-by-side with the championship leader at 100R and forcing her to defend all the way down to Dunlop, when Onaga also got in the mix.
With the KCMG driver in the mix, the top two started to break away, as Onaga took third from Saito at Turn 1 a lap later, but the duo swapped places on lap seven. Just behind them, Sato re-overtook Shimono for fifth. Up ahead, Tomishita caught Miura with two laps to go and made her move for the lead, but found herself in a spinning out of contention after the duo collided, while Kelsey Pinkowski also spun at Turn 3 on the same lap.
That left Miura to battle it out against Saito for the win, with the two series champions duking it out on the final lap, but it was ultimately Miura who came out on top to take her and the team's first win in the KYOJO Formula era. Saito hung on to second, while a last-lap pass gave Sato her second podium of the season, ahead of Onaga and Shimono. Joanne Ciconte took sixth, while Burton crossed the line seventh, ahead of Rami Sasaki, who took home the final point.
The top ten was rounded out by Sara Matsui and the returning Mako Hirakawa, while Raddatz was classified 11th after receiving a five-second penalty for forcing another car off-track. Kilei Kanemoto drove a quiet race in 12th, while championship leader Tomishita only salvaged a 13th-place finish, ahead of Marie Iwaoka and Ryu Yamamoto. Rina Ito finished 16th, ahead of Itsumo Shiraishi, Zhao Yun Qing and Kelsey Pinkowski, while Sitarvee Limnantharak was the only retirement of the race.
