The leaders were gone, and the battle for the final podium spot was a ways up the road as well. But the fight for sixth place in the second MotoAmerica Motovation Supersport race at The Ridge Motorsports Park was noteworthy. Battling with five-time MotoAmerica Supersport winner Tyler Scott and CSBK Supersport Championship leader Torin Collins was a young Japanese rider in his first outing on a Supersport-spec machine and his first time at the track.

But the round at The Ridge was definitely not the first rodeo for Ryota Ogiwara, 16. Ogiwara is a seasoned and experienced International-level rider. He burst onto the IDEMITSU Asia Talent Cup scene in 2023, scoring podiums in his last three races of the season and finishing third in the Championship. In 2024, Ogiwara crashed out of the first two races of the season in Qatar, then went on a tear, taking seven podiums, including two wins, on his way to second in the Championship. In 2025, he leads the Championship, as he is undefeated in the first four races.

Ogiwara’s family knows the family that owns Vesrah, best known in the U.S. for its motorcycle brake components and its long association with motorcycle road racing. Last year, Vesrah Racing entered Hayden Gillim in the Daytona 200 on a Suzuki GSX-R750. Team Principal Mark Junge said that during his conversations with Vesrah, the company mentioned that they wanted to give Ogiwara a chance to race in the U.S. Ogiwara has spend time with Junge training and practicing in the States, but the chance to get him onto the racetrack didn’t happen until The Ridge.

There were, as they say, lots of moving parts to align. At The Ridge, Junge was heading up the Honda Superbike efforts, and he had visitors from Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) on hand. The bike that Ogiwara was riding was the same Suzuki that Gillim rode to first in the 2024 Loudon Classic, third in the 2024 Daytona 200 and second in the AHRMA Pro Challenge Race at Barber Motorsports Park; “That bike won $76,000 last year,” Junge said. While it is a well-fettled racebike–and it actually recorded the highest Supersport trap speed, according to MotoAmerica timing and scoring–the optics of having a Suzuki under the Honda awning were not optimal, so Ogiwara was pitted well away from the Honda rig and Junge was shuttling back and forth over the weekend.

Still, Ogiwara came to grips quickly with the Suzuki, although he described it as “much bigger, heavier and faster” than the Honda NSF250R Moto3 bikes he has raced in the Asia Talent Cup series. He qualified 12th, a bit more than two seconds off the pace of polesitter and defending Supersport Champion Mathew Scholtz. Race One was a struggle, and Ogiwara finished 14th, 43 seconds behind at the flag. But in Race Two, Ogiwara ran as high as sixth before dropping to eighth, 30 seconds behind Scholtz and within a second of Scott, who was recovering from an off-track excursion, and Collins.

While Ogiwara’s plans for next year are not yet settled, his eyes are on the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup series. But it would be no surprise to see him on a MotoAmerica grid again.