8 Hours of Suzuka « Coca Cola Zero A challenging race for the European teams The 8 Hours of Suzuka “Coca Cola Zero”, the fourth round of the 2009 Qtel FIM Endurance World Championship will start from next Thursday with the free practice on the Japanese track. The qualifying session is scheduled for Friday. On Saturday will take place the “Special Stage”, a Superpole open to two riders of the ten best teams, and this will reallocate the first ten places on the final starting grid. The race will start Sunday at 11:30 AM (GMT + 9) and the race will finish at 7:30 PM, slightly after the sunset at Suzuka. 58 teams are expected to race. To compete against the best private and semi-official Japanese teams will be a hard challenge for the three permanent teams who will race at Suzuka this year. Championship leader Yamaha Austria Racing Team is one of the most experimented. The Austrian Yamaha team has regularly been in the top 15 since the 2004 8 Hours of Suzuka, except when they took the thirteenth place in 2007 after their bike faced some overheating problems. In eleventh place last year, YART aims to enter the top 10 this year to increase their gap in the championship. In the Yamaha Austria team there are three riders familiar with Suzuka, Igor Jerman, Steve Martin and Gwen Giabbani. After some uncertainty due to financial reasons, Phase One Endurance will finally be at Suzuka. The British Yamaha team also has a long race history at Suzuka, although they have never been as successful as YART. However, Phase One Endurance has been several times in the top 20 since the 2004 8 Hours of Suzuka. Pedro Vallcaneras, twelfth last year with Folch Endurance, Damian Cudlin, thirteenth last year with Phase One Endurance and British Superbike rider Graeme Gowland will ride the Yamaha Phase One Endurance. BK Maco Moto Racing Team took seventeenth place last year at Suzuka. With Dani Ribalta, twelfth last year with Folch Endurance, Jason Pridmore and Victor Carrasco, the Slovakian Yamaha team hopes to score great points and make a significant move in the championship. Once announced at Suzuka, RMT 21 Racing won’t be at Suzuka this year after two bikes were destroyed during the practice and the race last month at Albacete. To achieve their goals, the three permanent teams will have to race against the best Japanese teams, in the likes of the Honda FCC TSR of Kosuke Akiyochi, Shinichi Itoh and Yusuke Teshima, the Suzuki Yoshimura of Daisaku Sakai, Kasuki Tokudome and Nobuatsu Aoki and the Honda Dream Sakurai of Chojun Kameya and Australian rider Josh Brookes. More, from a press release issued by Honda: Suzuka 8 Hours, World Endurance Championship Suzuka Circuit, July 26 2009 THREE HRC CBR1000RR TEAMS TACKLE 32nd SUZUKA 8 HOURS Honda will support three private teams with HRC factory machinery at this year’s Coca-Cola Zero Suzuka 8 Hours World Endurance Championship race, one of the world’s most prestigious motorcycle racing events. Honda has an illustrious record in this gruelling high-speed epic, once likened to “eight Grand Prix races in one day”, having one 22 victories in the 31 races staged since 1978. This year Honda goes for its 12th 8 Hours victory in 13 years and its fifth success with its CBR1000RR machine. Current 8 Hours favourite is the F.C.C TSR Honda team of Kosuke Akiyoshi (34-years-old) and veteran Shinichi Ito (42) who recently won the Suzuka 300km race, the 8 Hours prologue event known as “the road to 8 Hours”. The team and both its riders have winning form at the 8 Hours, Ito having won the race on three occasions (1997, 1998 and 2006) and Akiyoshi having triumphed in 2007. Only two men have won more 8 hours than multiple Japanese champion Ito: former 500 World Champion Wayne Gardner (four victories) and MotoGP and 250 GP winner Tohru Ukawa (five victories). Suzuka specialist Ito said: “At the last test before the Suzuka 8 Hours we made three long-runs, also the final check. For the machine, we have some more work to do before the Suzuka 8 Hours starts, but there is no problem with my physical condition, I am ready for the long race. By riding at the test I was able to find my race rhythm, and I am excited to be riding with Akiyoshi. We won’t let our chance to win this Suzuka 8 Hours slip away!” Akiyoshi recently topped a recent pre-race Suzuka test day, followed by Tatsuya Yamaguchi (33) who will ride the second of the HRC CBR1000RR machines at the 8 Hour, alongside Musashi RT HARC-PRO team-mate Yoshiteru Konishi (39). Yamaguchi and Konishi have also showed their potential by finishing a hard-fought second in the 300km. Third of the HRC CB1000RR 8 Hours teams will the Honda DREAM Racing Team Sakurai Honda pairing of Chojun Kameya (32) and Australian Josh Brookes (26). Kameya finished fifth in the 300km race, riding the two hours all alone! The Honda DREAM Racing Sakurai team is the only one of the three HRC-supported squads to use Dunlop tyres; the other two will use Bridgestone’s. Honda won its first 8 Hours success in 1979, when Australians Tony Hatton and Michael Cole took victory on a CB900. Derivatives of the inline-four machine won a further two 8 Hours before the marque’s first win with its new generation of V4 machines in 1984, when Americans Mike Baldwin and Fred Merkel triumphed on an RS750R. Honda V4s essentially ruled the 8 Hours for a decade and a half, taking 11 wins from 16 events. After the RS750R’s success, the legendary RVF750 F1 machine achieved five wins (with riders including Gardner, Mick Doohan and Dominique Sarron) and then the RC45 Superbike took another five (with riders including Aaron Slight, Doug Polen, Tadayuki Okada, Ukawa and Ito). The next bike to rule the 8 Hours was Honda’s VTR1000SPW V-twin Superbike which won four straight wins from 2000 to 2003 (with riders including Ukawa, Daijiro Kato, Colin Edwards and Valentino Rossi). The inline-four CB1000RR won its first 8 Hours in 2004, with Ukawa and Hitoyasu Izutsu onboard, tracing Honda’s inline-four lineage back to its first 8 Hours win with the CB900. This year’s Suzuka 8 Hours is the fourth round of the six-race Q-Tel FIM Endurance World Championship.