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. Due to an entry of 84, qualifying was split into two groups: The morning sessions were held in the dry, sunny conditions while the afternoon was more mixed and despite some rain, many of the afternoon qualifying sessions were declared officially “wet”. When a qualifying session is declared wet, the Suzuka-only ‘four sets of tyres for qualifying’ rule does not apply to that session and teams may use extra tyres during that session. With the ‘wet’ track almost bone dry, there was an opportunity for teams to use special qualifying tyres, which would only last two or three laps. Konishi took a chance and improved his time significantly from this morning’s session by 1.5 seconds, setting the fastest lap of the session and becoming the first rider to break into the 2:09s during timed qualifying. Watanabe was fastest in Group B and second overall ahead of Nori Haga (Yamaha Blue Racing). Suzuki Castrol’s Vincent Philippe improved slightly on his earlier time in the afternoon session along with team mate Keiichi Kitagawa who missed a chance to improve further when he crashed on the first corner of his final lap of the day. And third rider Matthieu Lagrive was third in his group. The final top ten grid positions will be decided tomorrow afternoon during the Top Ten Trial super pole style special stage.