Suzuka 8 Hour is one of the most popular races in the world. For the Endurance enthusiasts this is together with the Bol D’Or and the Le Mans 24h the main event of the season. Every year permanent riders face in this race all the “guest stars” with their Official bikes, with more than 70 teams competing.
Team Yoshimura Suzuki’s Nobuatsu Aoki and Atsushi Watanabe raced their GSX-R1000 into third position in the Suzuka 8-Hour World Endurance fifth round as reigning World Champions Suzuki Castrol crashed three times, finished a lowly 38th, but still came away with a 21-point lead in the series.
Yoshimura Suzuki’s Akira Watanabe has put his GSX-R1000 into provisional second on the grid for Sunday’s Suzuka 8-Hour World Endurance fifth round as World Champions and series leaders Suzuki Castrol are currently down in 15th. Watanabe set a time of 2:09.636, which was just over 400ths-of-a-second behind pole-setter Yoshiteru Konishi on the Toy Story Honda.
Yamaha has finalized its plans for round five of the 2006 Endurance World Championship, the Suzuka 8-hour race held at the Japanese circuit on 30 July. A three-team entry will be headed by the Yamaha Blue Racing team, which will feature riders Colin Edwards and Noriyuki Haga riding a specially prepared YZF-R1 SP. The event will mark a reunion of the rider pairing which won the event in 1996, when they rode a Yamaha YZF750SP.