VOL. 54 ISSUE 30 AUGUST 1, 2017 P43
Yamaha Factory
Racing Team Wins
Suzuka 8 Hours
T
he Yamaha Factory Racing Team won the
Suzuka 8 Hours for the third successive year.
The Japanese factory team crossed the finish line
ahead of Kawasaki Team Green (Kazuma Wata-
nabe, Leon Haslam and Azlan Shah Bin Kamaruza-
man) and F.C.C. TSR Honda (Dominique Aegerter,
Randy de Puniet and Josh Hook), while GMT94
Yamaha (David Checa, Niccolò Canepa and Mike
Di Meglio) finished 11th to lift the 2016-2017 FIM
Endurance World Championship title.
The winning Yamaha team was made up of Kat-
suyuki Nakasuga, Alex Lowes and Michael van der
Mark. The Japanese factory team
will go down in the annals of the
Suzuka 8 Hours as the second
team to have won the race three
years in a row, after Team Cabin
Honda did it from 2000 to 2002.
In front of 128,000 spectators,
Kawasaki Team Green's Leon
Haslam took the holeshot of the 40th Suzuka 8
Hours, but soon it was Yamaha Factory Racing
Team and Musashi RT Harc-Pro Honda that waged
a battle for the lead until Takaaki Nakagami's crash
caused Musashi RT to fall back to fourth. The
Yamaha team then went it alone in the lead all the
way to the finish with Lowes setting a new race lap
record of 2:06.932, besting the previous record of
2:07.943 by Ryuichi Kiyonari in 2012.
After a drawn-out battle with F.C.C. TSR Honda
lasting for nearly the entire race, Kawasaki Team
Green moved into second place right at the
end of the race. It had looked like F.C.C. TSR
Honda would finish second, but the team's Honda
CBR1000RR SP2 engine caught fire, forcing
Randy de Puniet to make a lightning-quick pit stop
a few minutes before the finish.
Winners Lowes
(on left),
Nakasuga and
van der Mark
made light work
of the field in the
2017 Suzuka 8
Hours.
