WEC: Hondas fill the podium at Suzuka 8 Hours

Honda teams secured a 1-2-3 finish in the Suzuka 8 Hours, round 3 of the FIM World Endurance Championship, at the weekend.

The Honda MuSashi Harc Pro bike ridden by Riyuichi Kiyonari, Takaaki Nakagami and Takumi Takahashi claimed the win in scorching hot conditions at the Japanese circuit, beating the pre-race favourites Shinichi Itoh and Makoto Tamada of the Keihin Kohara Racing Team into second place. The FCC TSR squad of Kosuke Akiyoshi, Jonathan Rea and Yuki Takahashi was third.

The Kehin Kohara squad had a virtually faultless race and ran in the top 3 throughout, but just didn’t have enough pace to defeat the MuSashi crew in the 33rd edition of the famous race.

The FCC TSR squad was rightly delighted with their result as they fought back from two penalties, both for Akiyoshi overtaking under yellow flags, and a fall by Rea. At one stage they were down in 42nd position, four laps behind the leaders, but battled back to clinch the final podium spot and the fastest lap of 2:08.705.

There were hard luck stories aplenty in the race, including for the pole-sitting Yoshimura Suzuki team riders Daisaku Sakai and Yukio Kagayama who were delayed by two crashes but still managed to finish sixth behind the Faro Plot Panthera Suzuki team in fourth and Honda Team Plus One crew in fifth.

Championship leaders Bolliger Switzerland was the best placed of the WEC’s regular squads, ninth place earning eight points to increase their championship advantage over the Yamaha Austria Racing Team, which crashed twice and finished down in 16th.

Yamaha France GMT 94 Ipone suffered a frustrating event right from qualifying where they were hampered by overheating problems. Team boss Christophe Guyot made a great start from 14th on the grid and was up to ninth at the end of the first hour before a broken valve ended the team’s race.

The best placed European bike was the BMW of Japanese team Tras & G-Tribe which came home in 18th.

The championship now heads to Magny-Cours for the prestige Bol d’Or in September.

FIM World Endurance Championship results – Round 3, Suzuka 8 Hours

Top 20

1. MuSashi RT Harc-Pro (R. Kiyonari, T. Nakagami, T. Takahashi)
2. Keihin Kohara Racing Team (S. Ito, M. Tamada)
3. F.C.C. TSR Honda (K. Akiyoshi, J. Rea, Y. Takahashi)
4. Plot Faro Panthera (O. Deguchi, T. Yasuda, Y. Kodama)
5. Team Plus One (S. Iwata, Y. Teshima)
6. Yoshimura Suzuki with ENEOS (D. Sakai, N. Aoki, Y. Kagayama)
7. Teluru HoneyBeeRacing (H. Noda, T. Sekiguchi)
8. BEET Racing (H. Takahashi, Y. Hatano, O. Nishijima)
9. Team Bolliger Switzerland (H. Saiger, P. Muff, R. Stamm)
10. Honda Escargot/PGR/Sayama/H-TEC(E) (M. Kuboyama, T. Nakatsuhara)
11. Honda Suzuka Racing Team (T. Nakamura, M. Akiya)
12. Motobum and Ishigaki Island Uminchu (T. Takahashi, T. Oki, I. Shimizu)
13. RS-ITOH & Asia (I. Higashimura, T. Iwasaki, A. Ioda)
14. Team Frontier Clever-Wolf Racing (K. Teramoto, T. Nakai, T. Fukami)
15. Evangelion RT Test Type-01 Trick Star (S. Takeishi, T. Serizawa, Y. Konno)
16. Yamaha Austria Racing Team (I. Jerman, S. Martin, G. Giabbani)
17. Team NAP'S (M. Sato, A. Igarashi, T. Shimizu)
18. Tras & G-Tribe 8810R (T. Toda, H. Takada, E. Saito)
19. Confia H.M.F Like a Wind (Y. Takamiya, Y. Takahashi, S. Suma)
20. Honda QCT Q-Youkai Meiwa Racing (M. Ando, S. Noyori, T. Soh)

2010 FIM World Endurance Championship Points (after 3 rounds)

1. Bolliger Team Switzerland, 46pts
2. Yamaha Austria Racing Team, 36
3. GSR Kawasaki, 35
4. MuSashi RT Harc Pro, 30
5. Suzuki Endurance Racing Team, 30
6. RT Moto Virus Racing, 28
7. Keihin Kohara RT, 24
8. RAC 41 – City Bike, 22
9. National Motos, 22
10. BMP Elf 99 Racing Team, 22

Next round: 11-12 September, Bol d'Or, Magny-Cours

Watch Suzuka 8 Hours highlights on Thursday 12 August at 8:10pm (BST) on Motors TV.


Andy Wilkinson

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