| | | | Suzuka 8 Hours : The Yoshimura Suzuki Team, back to victory |  Written: 31/07/2007 : 10:47. Read 1333 times (4/day). | | The integrality of this filed article is for Premium Members. | 24 years ago was the last victory of a Suzuki bike at the Suzuka 8 hours.
Yukio Kagayama and Kosuke Akiyoshi raced their GSX-R1000 to victory in the Suzuka 8 Hour World Endurance third round in Japan.
They won ahead Tadayuki Okada and Carlos Checa's Honda, and Yusuke Teshima and Shinichi Ito's Honda.
  6 votes | |
| |
It was back in 1983 at the third Suzuka 8 Hour race that the Suzuki team tasted victory with riders Hervé Moineau and Richard Hubin and this year's win ended the 10-year domination of Honda.
Kagayama led from the start from Honda's Ryuichi Kiyonari, Norick Abe (Yamaha) and Tady Okada (Honda), opening up a 15-second advantage by the one hour mark when Akiyoshi took over.
A first stop who was fatal for the Honda ridden by Kiyonari and Toseland, the briton, leader of the world Superbike championship, made only three laps of his first leg before crash and retire due to the huge damages that the bike had...
The Suzuki duo continued to increase their advantage lap by lap to take victory with 216 laps around the 5.82-kilometre (3.6-mile) track in dry conditions in eight hours one minute and 35.077 seconds..
Japanese veteran Tadayuki Okada and Carlos Checa of Spain, the pole sitters who were aiming for Honda's record 11th consecutive victory here, failed to catch up with their Suzuki rivals, finishing second in 8:03:36.561.
Defending champion Shinichi Ito, also on a Honda, teamed up with Yusuke Teshima to come in third one lap behind the winners in 8:02:49.520.
World Championship leaders SERT with riders Vincent Philippe, Matthieu Lagrive and Julien Da Costa were the second best of the permanent teams finishing in seventh position with Yoshimura's second team finishing just off the rostrum in fourth.
It was the third leg of the six-round world motorcycle endurance championship series with the fourth round moving to Oschersleben 24 Hours in Germany August 11-12.
Yukio Kagayama:
"My strategy for my first stint was to pull away and I achieved this. My partner Akiyoshi is my long time friend and I know his potential very well. The Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R1000 is awesome and the Bridgestone tyres were excellent. I would like to thank my staff and team, Yoshimura and Suzuki."
Yohei Kato - Yoshimura Suzuki Team Manager:
"We believed Kagayama and Akiyoshi could win! They made very good lap times all through the 2 ...
The integrality of this filed article is for Premium Members.
(2 pictures - 615 words. remaining).
|
Please register if you want to write a comment:
Clic here |
|
|
|
| | Public Poll
Who will be the 2008 Moto GP world champion?
|
| | THE BLOGS | | | | PICTURES TOP 10 | | | |
|
