2019 Supersport 300 World Championship is starting soon. The entry-level series of World Superbike will face its third season with a completely new format and the entry list counts even 52 riders from 17 countries. For the first time, Japan will be on the field, as the Asian country will be represented by Yuta Okaya.
Young Samurai
Yuta Okaya will be the third japanese in the whole WorldSBK circus, as he joins Ryuichi Kiyonari (Superbike, Moriwaki Althea Honda Team) and Hikari Okubo (Supersport, Kawasaki Puccetti Racing). Born in 1999 in Tokyo, Okaya started racing when he was 7 and then he became twice NSF100 HRC Trophy Champion, as he won the title in both 2011 and 2012. During the following years, Okaya had to cope with school and so he occasionally took part in local series hosted at Tsukuba and Suzuka. In 2016, he joined Moriwaki Club, a program for young riders created by Moriwaki Engineering (famous company and racing team linked to Honda).
Moto3
The real turning point in Yuta Okaya’s career came in 2018: the young Jap raced with Moriwaki Club in the J-GP3 (Moto3) class of All Japan Road Race Championship and the campaign was very positive. Despite facing his debut season on a Moto3 machine, Okaya scored three wins (at Motegi, Sugo and Tsukuba) and fought for the title until the last round, held at Suzuka. At the end Genki Nakajima defeated him by just four points and a half, but Okaya showed great speed during the whole season and his performance will finally bring him to World Supersport 300.
Debut on the world stage
Okaya will be the first Japanese rider competing in WorldSSP300. The guy from Tokyo has joined David Salom’s DS Junior Team, the Spanish squad triumphing in 2018 with Ana Carrasco. He has to get used to a very high-level and crowded championship, but Okaya will try to grow quickly and pull out the full potential of Kawasaki Ninja 400. All of this will happen under the supervision of his manager Midori Moriwaki, Managing Director of Moriwaki Engineering and heart of the homonymous team competing in All Japan, World Superbike and Suzuka 8 Hours.
Goal
Everything will be new to Yuta Okaya, but the 19-year-old aims for a brilliant debut season, as he says in a press release on his website: “Every race will be challenging for sure, due to the many competitors around me. However, I will continue to do my by best to bring back a result for the team and raise a Japanese flag on the podium“. 2019 Supersport 300 World Championship will start in the weekend from 5th to 7th April at Motorland Aragon, a circuit Okaya knows following a test done with DS Junior Team.
What to say? Ganbatte ne, Yuta!