cracked where the rear shock
absorber mounts. By an odd coincidence, the Zongshen 2 team, third in
the World Endurance Championship
chase, were out of the race three
hours later with the same failure.
The race should have been a sure
win for Honda, the only manufacturer
that still enters factory teams managed and staffed by the manufacturer. The cumulative running time of
both Honda factory bikes was just
over two hours, as Nicky Hayden
crashed on oil on the second lap, and
Hitoyasu Izutsu crashed in the second
hour after he and teammate Tohru
Ukawa had built a huge lead. Neither
faller was seriously injured.
The race was Suzuki's best chance
for victory in 20 years after a pair of
powerful GSX-Rl000s qualified sec-
ond and third. The Yoshimura Suzuki
was lost after crashing on the oil that
claimed Hayden, while the Kenz JTrust Suzuki refused to start after the
final pit stop with a minute and a half
in hand over second place.
The Corona Extra Suzuki team
came back to Suzuka after an
impressive third-in-class debut last
year. This time Corona Extra had two
entries, with Adam Fergusson and
Anthony Gobert entered in the XX-F
class, and Jordan Szoke and Paul
Young in the Super Production class.
The Fergusson and Gobert motorcycle
suffered an engine failure during prerace warm-up practice and ran the
race with a back-up motor that
lacked power but was good enough
to carry them to eighth overall. Szoke
and Young had a strong race going
The Team Sakurai Honda team of
Yukio Nukumi and Gaku Kamata (71)
stayed clear of all the drama to take
the win in Honda's seventh
consecutive year. The Kenz J Trust
Mojo Suzuki led multiple times during
the race with Katsuaki Fujiwara and
teammate Keiichi Kitagawa at the
helm, but the bike refused to start
after their final pit stop, ending their
race.
until another bike knocked the tail
light off at the hairpin. Later, the
headlight switch malfunctioned,
which required a long pit stop to
hard-wire the lights to stay on.
Doug Polen was an impressive fifth
at the end of the first hour.
But the
engine in his Honda blew up in the
second hour while his Japanese
teammate was aboard the bike.
