Soichiro Minamimoto Completes Comeback at Final Round to Lift SS600 Title

December 4, 2023—Soichiro Minamimoto competed in Round 6 of the Asia Road Racing Championship (ARRC) that was held in Thailand from December 1 to 3, where he raced a YZF-R6 for the Yamaha GEN BLU Racing Team ASEAN in the Supersports 600 (SS600) class. He won Race 1 on Saturday, December 2 to take over the championship lead. He followed that up with a 2nd place finish in Race 2 on Sunday, December 3, completing a dramatic comeback in the final round to win his first ever championship title.

Minamimoto joined the team this season and took a podium in just his second race, with a 3rd in Race 2 of the opening round. At Round 3 in Japan he finished an impressive 2nd place in Race 1, but by that point he was 5th overall in the championship standings and 39 points behind the leader.

However, from Round 4 in Indonesia, Minamimoto and the team went on the offensive, finishing 3rd in Race 1 and taking their first win of the season in Race 2. In Round 5 in China, he took a 3rd and a 2nd to make it four podium finishes in a row, closing the gap to his rivals and coming into the final round of the season in 3rd overall with a 7 point gap to the leader.

In the final round of the season, Minamimoto qualified on pole position and in Race 1 he took the holeshot and kept the lead for the entire race, securing his second win of the season and moving into the championship lead by two points. In Race 2, he was able to pull away from his title rivals who crashed early on, moving one step closer to winning the title. In the end his teammate took the victory, but Minamimoto finished a strong 2nd, clinching the first title of his racing career.

Born in 2000, Minamimoto first competed in the ARRC's Asia Production 250 (AP250) class in 2016. In the same year, he also participated in the Yamaha VR46 Master Camp, a Yamaha development program for young riders. Since then, he has made wildcard entries in the ARRC and in the All Japan Road Race Championship’s ST600 and ST1000 classes. This year, in addition to the ARRC, he also competed in the Moto2 World Championship doing replacement rides, and in lifting his first title he has proven how much that experience has helped him grow as a rider.

Soichiro Minamimoto
“This season there were some tracks I hadn’t raced before, and I hadn’t raced in the SS600 class in three years, so the first half of the season was very challenging. But once we got a good handle on our base setup, we turned that around from the Indonesian round onward. I did some replacement rides in Moto2, and that taught me that the rider can make a big difference on the bike, which helped my mentality a lot I think. I’ve finished 2nd in quite a few seasons so far in my career, so it was great to put that behind me with this title win, and I have to say a huge thank you to the whole team for being the key in doing that!”