Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127796
·ROAD RACE . . . World Championship Enduran~ series By Tracy Hagen Photos by Eric Cells SUZUKA QTY, JAPAN, JULY 28 olin Edwards II and oriyuki Haga brought victory to Yama1 "ha and stole the show from ..!.../ Honda, Kawasaki and Suzuki in the prestigious Coca-Cola Suzuka 8Hour endurance race, round four of the FIM endurance championship series. The pair are the youngest winners ever in the 19 times the race has been held. They also set a new distance record of 214 laps, bettering the old Round 4: Suzuka 8-Hour (Below) American. Colin Edwards II and his teammata Norlyukl Ha98 won tha Suzuka B-Hour in front of 101,000 Sunday spectetors. It was Yamaha's first Suzuka victory since 1990. (Right) Kawasaki's Simon Cratar and Anthony Gobert were just ovar one minute behind the winning Yamaha. mark of 212 laps set by Aaron Slight and Tadyuki Okada in 1995. . "Yeah, oriyuki and I are two of a kind: We both have nuts," Edwards said from the victory podium. Second place went to Kawasaki's Anthony Gobert and Simon Crafar. Their ZX7RR also completed 214 laps, and finished one minute, nine seconds behind Edwards and Haga. Reigning World Superbike ~ampi on Carl Fogarty and reigning All Japan Superbike champion Takuma Aoki finished third, one lap down. Fogarty and Aoki were one of four pairs of riders that made up Honda's Suzuka Dream Team. Unfortunately, all four factory RC45 bikes were crashed before the halfway point of the race. The most significant of the crashes was by Aaron Slight, the three-time and defending event champion. Slight broke one, possibly two, toes on his left foot, but was planning to race the next World Superbike round at Brands Hatch, England, the following weekend. Reigning American superbike champion Miguel DuHamel finished eighth, down four laps from Edwards and Haga. DuHamel's partner Tomu Ukawa, the reigning All Japan 250cc Grand Prix champion and now world GP 250cc rider, collided with a backmarker in the fifth hour and the team lost three laps while the bike was repaired in the pits. Texan Doug Polen teamed with Frenchman Eric Gomez to finish ninth on a S)lZuki GSXR750. Polen struggled with handling problems throughout practice and qualifying, and was still sorting out the bike little by little during the race. Like the factory Honda effort, the Suzuki program failed to net big results, but for different reasons. In practice and qualifying the Suzukis were consistently the slowest of the four factory teams by at least one second per lap, and in the race the Suzukis were not able to run one hour on a full fuel load. On top of the horsepower problem, the handling problems and the fuel economy problem, the lead Suzuki team of Scott Russell and Terry Rymer had to withdraw when their engine overheated and seized in the fourth hour. The last time a Yamaha won the Suzuka 8-Hour was in 1990, when Eddie Lawson and Tadahiko Taira triumphed. Honda gave away the race that year by keeping Wayne Gardner out on the course too long, causing his RVF to run' out of gas while he was leading comfortably.. The last non-Honda win was in 1993,