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/128168
Jordan Szoke (pictured) teamed with Australian Adam Fergusson to finish an Impressive 10th overall, third In class, in their first effort in the Suzuka 8 Hours. take in the race, eventually using up all the spares on hand to repair crash damage. Over the coming eight laps, the traffic became increasingly thicker, yet Kato managed to knife through the snails and hold his laps at 2:09. By lap 22, the snails had nearly come to a halt at the hairpin, and Kato had to sit up and wait. Tamada and Ryo pulled up with Kato and sat, too. Kato, Tamada, and Ryo left the snails exiting the Hairpin, and Tamada took advantage of the reduced interval to Kato to pass Kato on the brakes entering Spoon Curve. Kato was in no rush to overtake Tamada, and Tamada had an unmolested ride in the lead. Three laps later, Takeda peeled in to the pits at the 53-minute mark to hand the Sakuri Honda over to Barros. Takeda lost 28 seconds to the leaders during his run, far more than Barros thought Takeda would give up. ") didn't think he could lose so much," wondered Barros. "The deal is that maybe maximum 10 seconds per hour could be lost. Ten seconds I could recover in one hour." Ryo pitted on the following lap, and then everyone held their breath for the Hondas. The arithmetic for a six-stop strategy required 69 minutes between pit stops, though the first sessions tend to be the shortest as fuel is used on the sighting lap and warm-up lap. On lap 29, Tamada waved Kato around on the back straight. Kato pulled up, looked over to Tamada, but then pulled over to the edge of the track and dropped a leg, indicating his intentions to enter the pits. "During the first session, I was racing with Daijiro, my good friend, and it was great fun," said the alwayscheerful Tamada. "When Daijiro went and 62, respectively, and roughly an hour and 10 minutes from their teams' first stops. Honda's incredible race strategy was working. Once the Hondas were back up to speed again, Kato had a .52-of-a-second lead on Ryo. Tamada was six seconds behind Ryo in third, and Takeda was 25 seconds down from Okada. Kato set his personal best lap time of 2:08.467 on lap 64. Undeterred, Ryo pushed his pace in the 2:08 to 2:09 range for the next six laps to keep tabs on Kato. But the Suzuki rider relented on lap 70 and backed off to 2: 10 lap times. Kato capitalized on Ryo's decision to slow down, and by the time Ryo pitted on lap 80, Kato was plus 12 on him. Kato and Tamada pitted on laps 93 and 94, respectively. Edwards and Okada went out for duty, with Kagayama and Barros on the track. The race was 3 hours and 28 minutes old when Edwards completed lap 95. Kagayama was 10 seconds behind Edwards, Okada was 24 seconds behind Kagayama, and Barros was seven seconds behind Okada. Barros' second stint was the only one out of his four that he failed to make up ground to the motorcycle one position higher up - in this case, Okada's Honda. The seven-second gap gradually grew to 14-seconds by the time Barros ducked in e pits on lap 108. .. "The secgflel 'me Iliad a problem:::' with th rear] tire," explained Barros~_~~~h; "The t tire i Ii >-