Suzuka 8 Hour – Ten Days to Go Packed Schedule for Japanese World Endurance Race The Suzuka 8 Hour Japanese round of the FIM World Endurance Championship takes place in ten days time, on Sunday the 30th of July. The provisional schedule shows five days of non-stop action: Practice It all begins at the circuit on Wednesday the 26th, with scrutineering and the draw for practice groups. The teams are split into two groups to reduce the number of bikes on track at any one time during practice and qualifying sessions. Previous years have also seen a free practice session on Wednesday afternoon. Riders’ briefings, technical inspections and free practice sessions for the Suzuka 8 Hour World Endurance and Suzuka 4 Hour support race competitors take place on Thursday 27th, and there will also be the first pit walk of the event during the lunch break. Qualifying Qualifying for the Suzuka 8 Hour and 4 Hour teams takes place on Friday the 28th. There are two sessions for each rider from each team in each group, meaning virtually non-stop track action between 8:00am and 6:45pm. Then it’s night practice, between 7:00pm and 8:15pm. There’s another pit walk at lunchtime. SuperPole Special Stage and Suzuka 4 Hour The 4 Hour endurance support race for 600cc bikes takes place on Saturday morning. There’s a pit walk after the podium ceremony, then it’s straight into the warm up for the 8 Hours Special Stage. This is a two hour double-jeopardy SuperPole for both riders from the top 20 qualified teams, to decide start positions. The evening ends with a night-time pit walk and the 8 Hours Eve Festival. Race Day There’s a pit walk at 7:30am, for the early risers. Warm up is between 9:00am and 9:45 am, then there’s another pit walk, the start line “attractions” and the race start procedure which kicks off at 10:50am. The Suzuka 8 Hour race starts at 11:30am local time (3:30am BST / 4:30am CET) and finishes at 7:30pm local time (11:30am BST / 12:30pm CET), 30 minutes after sunset.