Rennie Scaysbrook | July 29, 2018
2018 Suzuka 8 Hours Race Result—Yamaha Factory Racing (Katsuyuki Nakasuga, Alex Lowes, and Michael van der Mark) has taken a fourth straight win in the Suzuka 8 Hours. The Yamaha entrant came home ahead of Red Bull Honda with Japan Post (Takumi Takahashi, Takaaki Nakagami, and Patrick Jacobsen) and pole sitters Team Green Kawasaki (Jonathan Rea, Leon Haslam, and Kazuma Watanabe).
2018 Suzuka 8 Hours Race Result
In the Endurance World Championship, the F.C.C TSR Honda France (Japanese team partnered with Honda France) team became the first Japanese team to take the outright honors in the championship’s history, finishing the race in fifth.
Rea and Team Green had taken the lead in the early stages but was caught out by a rain shower and crashed at low speed while on slick tires. He made it back to the pits for repairs but Team Green would finish a lap down.
The race distilled to a battle between Yamaha Factory Racing and Red Bull Honda with Japan Post, with the current 8 Hours champions stretching their advantage to 30.9 seconds at the flag.
Suzuki S-Pulse Dream Racing IAI (Hideyuki Ogata, Tom Bridewell, and Kasuki Watanabe) ran a flawless race to finish fourth, with F.C.C TSR Honda France (Freddy Foray, Alan Techer, and Josh Hook) rounding out the top five.
Two hours from the finish, Yamaha Factory Racing’s Michael Van Der Mark comes in for a pit stop.
F.C.C TSR Honda France thus takes the 2017/2018 FIM Endurance World Championship with a seven-point advantage over former world champions GMT94 Yamaha’s David Checa, Niccolò Canepa and Mike Di Meglio, who finished the Suzuka race in sixth.
The top 10 was rounded out by Honda Dream Asia Racing, KYB Moriwaki Motul Racing, Honda Endurance Racing and Yoshimura Suzuki Motul Racing.
Team Kagayama U.S.A. with American Moto2 racer Joe Roberts and teammates Yukio Kagayama and Naomichi Uramoto finished 11th.
2018 Suzuka 8 Hours Race Result
